Artemisia Gentileschi -- Judith Leyster -- Adélaïd Labille-Guiard -- Marie Denise Villers -- Rosa Bonheur -- Edmonia Lew
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English Pages 189 pages) : illustrations (some color [191] Year 2017
Table of contents :
Artemisia Gentileschi --
Judith Leyster --
Adélaïd Labille-Guiard --
Marie Denise Villers --
Rosa Bonheur --
Edmonia Lewis --
Paula Modersohn-Becker --
Vanessa Bell --
Alice Neel --
Lee Krasner --
Louise Bourgeois --
Ruth Asawa --
Ana Mendieta --
Kara Walker --
Susan O'Malley.
B ROAD S T RO K ES 15 WOMEN WHO MADE ART and
MADE HISTORY (I N T H AT O R D E R) BY BRIDGET QUINN WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LISA CONGDON
Text copyright © 2017 by Bridget Quinn. Illustrations on pages 18, 30, 38, 50, 60, 72, 84, 96, 104, 114, 124, 134, 144, 152, and 162 copyright © 2017 by Lisa Congdon. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Pages 179-183 constitute a continuation of the copyright page. ISBN 9781452152837 (epub, mobi) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Names: Quinn, Bridget, author. Title: Broad strokes : 15 women who made art and made history (in that order) / Bridget Quinn ; with illustrations by Lisa Congdon. Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016023856 | ISBN 9781452152363 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Women artists—Biography. | Women artists—History. | Art—History. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women. | ART / History / General. Classification: LCC N8354 .Q47 2017 | DDC 709.2/52 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023856 Design by Kristen Hewitt Chronicle Books LLC 680 Second Street San Francisco, California 94107 www.chroniclebooks.com
FOR LUKAS & ZUZU, ARTISTS & ATHLETES & FOR RO, A LWAY S & FOR P O L LY A N N Q U I N N , WITH LOVE & ADMIRATION (& APOLOGIES FOR THE BAD WORDS)
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. —ANNIE DILLARD, “LIVING LIKE WEASELS”
TA B L E OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 13
CHAPTER 1:
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI 19
CHAPTER 2:
JUDITH LEYSTER 31
CHAPTER 3:
ADÉLAÏDE LABILLE-GUIARD 39
CHAPTER 4:
MARIE DENISE VILLERS 51
CHAPTER 5:
ROSA BONHEUR 61
CHAPTER 6:
EDMONIA LEWIS 73
CHAPTER 7:
PA U L A M O D E R S O H N - B E C K E R 85
CHAPTER 8:
VA N E S S A B E L L 97
CHAPTER 9:
ALICE NEEL 105
CHAPTER 10:
LEE KRASNER 115
CHAPTER 11:
LOUISE BOURGEOIS 125
CHAPTER 12:
R U T H A S AWA 135
CHAPTER 13:
A N A M E N D I E TA 145
CHAPTER 14:
K A R A WA L K E R 153
CHAPTER 15:
S U S A N O ’M A L L E Y 163
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 174
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 175
ART CREDITS 179
INDEX 184
I N TR O D UCTION I T WA S 1987, the spring of my first college year in California. I was still a teenager, though just barely, and what I would make of myself in the world preoccupied my waking hours. In a move that made no rational sense to anyone, including myself, I was majoring in art history, a topic I knew nothing about. But, somehow, art was the thing I wanted most to understand. So in I jumped, a girl raised on the high plains of Montana, where our town’s one museum was dedicated to the work of local cowboy artist Charlie Russell.
That spring I was thrilled that my courses had entered the twentieth century at last, including a class dedicated to modern American art. After three thousand years of gods and nudes and kings and saints and boating parties on the Seine, I was finally comfortable. The class began with Regionalist painters like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, whose homey depictions edged along the paintings I’d grown up with. The course was taught by my only female professor, a visiting scholar from Texas, who had long, untamed red hair and wore men’s white shirts and jeans with cowboy boots. She walked with a cane and spoke in the flat, barely discernable drawl of the Texas Panhandle. I adored her. So when she said, Hey now, this is why abstraction is great and beautiful and true, I wrote it down in my notebook and I believed it. For the first time, I experienced the artworks lit up on the big screens in that vast auditorium not as signifiers of this time period or that artist, but as objects of value in themselves, as sometimes beautiful— and sometimes failed—expressions of singular human beings in communication with . . . well, with all of humanity. With me, even, a pale and clueless woman-child with dyed black hair and a newly pierced nose. I fairly swooned with the romance of it. And yet, there was something. Some niggle I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Some itch or need I could not locate clearly enough to ameliorate. By the second week of Modern American Art, we were in New York and left only to peek in on Europe and see what was happening there. Or to follow Duchamp or Dalí or Mondrian or any other dozens of artists fleeing toward Manhattan. Occasionally, a wife or female model was mentioned, but rarely. I took notes and mostly liked what I saw and tried not to worry about anything else.
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But then one afternoon our redheaded professor did not dim the lights. She started out just talking, leaning at a jaunty angle on her cane while glancing at her notes and relaying with some pleasure the story of one Jackson Pollock, who was born in Wyoming and went to high school in California. I leaned forward in my institutional seat. I hadn’t known any great artists came out of the American West. She put on her glasses, smiled, and read something young Jackson had written in a questionnaire, right about the time he was my age: “As to what I would like to be. It is difficult to say. An artist of some kind.” The whole world narrowed to the pinprick of my professor on stage. The niggle squirmed, but as I tried to locate its source and meaning, the lights went down and up came two ravishing paintings. One by Pollock and one by someone named Lee Krasner. Who was his wife, my professor said, removing her glasses. This Lee was a woman, and she was a painter, and she was good. The niggle became sound, a roar in the brain so violent I missed most of the remaining lecture. When class was over, I marched my combat boots to the arts library and checked out three books on Jackson Pollock. There were no books dedicated to Lee Krasner, so I had to find out about her through her husband. About how she had attended the Art Students League before him, where she was so accomplished that her instructor, Hans Hofmann, paid her the ultimate compliment: “This is so good you would not know it was painted by a woman.” I closed the book, thinking of the volumes on art I’d grown up with. My family owned a set of Time Life books dedicated to important artists, dozens of them on a shelf in my father’s study, each with the same gray cover, but each one dedicated to a different painter or sculptor. I loved these books for years, until about age ten, when I suddenly realized that not a single one was about a woman. Then I believed I’d uncovered yet another terrible adult truth: girls could not be great artists. After that, those books just made me sad. I went to my locker in the art library and took out our main text, a massive volume called History of Art by H. W. Janson, hoisted it onto a table, and started flipping through. At last, on page 500, the early seventeenth-century section on the Italian Baroque, it read: Artemisia Gentileschi, followed by, “We have not encountered a woman artist thus far.” I wrote down her name, then worked slowly, page by page, to the end. By the time I hit the back cover, I had a list of sixteen women, one of them Lee Krasner.1 In more than 800 pages, this was all “official” art history could offer.
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I mentioned the women artists in Janson’s book to my professor at her office hours. Except for Mary Cassatt and Georgia O’Keeffe, and now Krasner, I’d never heard of any of them. She gave a throaty, smoker’s chuckle. “You’ve got the new edition! Our version didn’t have a single woman in it with her clothes on.” She waved a broad hand in the air, as if flicking away smoke. “Not really, but you know what I mean. No women artists.” She let me do my research paper on Krasner, with the understanding that it would be difficult to find sources. It was. But whenever I had the chance, I ferreted out what I could about the women on my Janson list. Some didn’t interest me much, but others, like Gentileschi and Krasner and Rosa Bonheur, a swaggering animal painter from the nineteenth century, I couldn’t get enough of. I also uncovered other incredible women not in Janson, like Edmonia Lewis, who was part Chippewa, part African American, came of age during the Civil War, and spent much of her adult life as a successful sculptor in Rome. Or Frida Kahlo, who, believe it or not, was just then starting to appear alongside Che Guevara on the T-shirts of Latina activists on campus. Kahlo wasn’t in Janson either, but the first English biography had come out a few years earlier and I found a copy in the main library (not the arts library). Then, as now, I called myself a feminist, but my fixation with these artists went beyond feminism, if it had anything to do with it at all. I identified with these painters and sculptors the way my friends identified with Joy Division or The Clash or Hüsker Dü. In some strange way, I felt they understood me. They belonged to me. Janson wrote his art history bible when he was a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, which is where I ended up for graduate school. There, I encountered the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker in Gert Schiff’s course on German Expressionism. She died young, but her work was among the first of what would become the bold vanguard of German Modernism. Her paintings and those of her journals translated into English blew the top of my head off. It wasn’t the last time I’d regret my poor, though passing, German score. My French was better. In Robert Rosenblum’s seminar on Jacques Louis David during my second year of grad school, I was assigned a portraitist named Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, about whom almost nothing was written in English. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the street, in a gallery at the top of the grand staircase, there was a monumental self-portrait of Labille-Guiard with two of her female
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students. I visited the painting almost daily, locking eyes with an artist who gazed out from the canvas with sure confidence, modeling that and more for the students behind her, and for me. I worked hard. I wanted to do well, yes, but more than that I wanted to know LabilleGuiard’s story. Who was the formidable woman, this masterful painter, forgotten by history? And maybe most important to me—a shameful, even prurient need—I just wanted to know what happened. One night, home late from a day spent wrestling with eighteenth-century French at the Institute library, where I discovered that Labille-Guiard had been forced to burn her most ambitious composition, I turned off the lights in my room and lit votive candles from the corner bodega. Candles flickering and the Velvet Underground crackling from my boom box, I ate chocolate chip cookies washed down with beer, stared out my window at the people and cars and lights, and wondered why I ever wanted to study art history. Half a six-pack—tall boys—and a second VU album later, I suddenly knew at long last: I want to be an artist, not study them. I came to New York to become a writer. ***** Great lives are inspiring. Great art is life changing. The careers of the fifteen artists that follow run the gamut from conquering fame to utter obscurity, but each of these women has a story, and work, that can scramble and even redefine how we understand art and success. ***** At a cocktail party not long ago, a friend asked what I was working on. I’m writing about artists I love, I said happily. “Which artists?” She asked, grinning and sipping her cocktail. I imagine she pictured a fierce Mission muralist or half-naked performance artist. I got no further than a single word—Baroque—when she lowered her drink. “The worst class I took in college was art history,” she said. “So. Boring.”
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“Maybe you had the wrong teacher,” I said, about to add a titillating art historical tidbit when she caught sight of something more interesting over my shoulder, and moved on. It strikes me that we might need a little caveat here before getting started. Can we agree at the outset to lay down our qualms about Ye Olde Arte Hystore at the door of this book? Put them down. Walk away. Let us agree that together we shall fear no corsets, nor nursing saviors, nor men in top hats and cravats, nor vast expanses of peachy dimpled thighs. Let us withhold judgment until we know more. ***** When I was still an undergraduate, my first TA paid for grad school with his pool shark winnings. As a hustler, he went by the nom de pool of Santa Barbara Jim. However lamentably prosaic his moniker, SBJ lived better than your average grad student. He wore natty linen blazers and cognac-colored wingtips. He’d mastered pool and understood people. By the marriage of those two assets he made a fine living. In addition, SBJ knew a thing or two about art. Good art, he once said, gave him a hard-on. He aimed to shock, but I was charmed, writing it down in my notebook, alongside definitions for oeuvre and sfumato. I liked hearing him talk dirty about art. Though a better sort of undergraduate might have objected to his gender-exclusive language, I did not. I took hard-on metaphorically. That great art should move you bodily, not just intellectually. That a good erotic jolt is appropriate to good connoisseurship. And also, that you can’t know what will turn your crank, until it does. ***** Let’s get started.
1. Janson’s artists, in order: Artemisia Gentileschi, Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Rosa Bonheur, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Gertrude Käsebier, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Judy Pfaff, Audrey Flack, Barbara Hepworth, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Joanne Leonard.
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CHAPTER 1:
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI There were many Caravaggisti, but only one Caravaggista. —MARY GARRARD
H E R E I S T H E F I R S T T H I N G I think you
The two women work in dispassionate
should know: Art can be dangerous, even
exertion. They could be Julia Child and
when decorous.
Alice Waters deboning a turkey. Sure it’s bloody and sure it’s some work, but it must
And sometimes, decorous art looks danger-
be done.
ous, too. Case in point, Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Severing the Head of Holofernes
Really, it must be done. The women are
(see page 20). Painted right around 1620, it
a Jewish widow named Judith and her
has lost none of its power to shock.
maidservant, Abra. They are executing an Assyrian general named Holofernes who
You may well be asking: What the hell?
will otherwise destroy their people.
Though, in one sense, the painting here is self-explanatory. Two women hold down a
However heroic the task, their images are
struggling man, while one of them draws a
not flattering ones. The women’s faces are
sword across his neck.
brightly lit from the lower left, casting unflattering shadows as they gaze down at
No question, this is a brutal, bloody paint-
their victim. Somewhat difficult to distin-
ing. So are many paintings—violence, like
guish from each other in age and rank, the
romantic love and spiritual passion, being
women are likewise both steadfast in their
one of the great themes of art. But there is
work, though Judith leans away slightly
so much in this particular painting that is
from the spurting blood. Maybe because
disturbing.
it’s staining her dress. Blood spatters
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Artemisia Gentileschi. Judith Severing the Head of Holofernes. c. 1620.
20
Judith’s bodice and breast, and it runs in
Like the vast majority of women who
thick red rivulets down the white mattress
became artists before the twentieth cen-
Holofernes struggles upon.
tury, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656) was the daughter of an artist. Her father,
Judith’s victim, writhing in death throes
Orazio Gentileschi, was a reputable Baroque
and shock, is naked. Judith and Abra are
painter in Rome. He was blessed, or cursed,
dressed. They stand while he is prone.
with enough talent to recognize those who
Judith wields a deadly weapon; he has
were brilliant.
nothing. In short, the women have all the
Orazio was an early follower of Caravag-
power here.
gio and his revolutionary art. Caravaggio
Not only are the women dressed, in stark
had established a new visual language, one
juxtaposition to their victim’s nudity, but
that married the immediacy of natural-
one of them is well dressed. Judith wears an
ism with a heightened dramatic flair. He
elegant gold gown with capacious sleeves
utilized chiaroscuro (bold contrasts of light
hiked above the elbows (she’s a woman at
and dark) to great effect, pushing it to the
work, after all) limned with red that rhymes
point of tenebrism (extremes of dominating
with the blood she’s spilling. Her strong
darkness pierced by bright, insistent spot-
left fist is entangled in Holofernes’s black
lights) for high drama in a world all viewers
hair, while higher up on that same arm she
could relate to. Contrast Caravaggio’s
wears a pair of gold bracelets. As Arte-
earthy vision with Leonardo’s mysterious
misia scholar Mary Garrard points out, one
otherworldly scenes of all-over haze (the
bracelet is slight, simple, while the other
aforementioned sfumato) or Michelangelo’s
is thick and ornate, with scenes inscribed
crisply outlined superheroes. It was a radi-
in separate ovals that, on close inspection,
cal, and masterful, departure.
look to be images of the goddess Diana. Also known by her Greek name, Artemis, this is
Orazio was chummy enough with Caravag-
the namesake of the very painter who has
gio to go to prison with him for a short time,
created this turbulent world.
in 1603, when Artemisia was just six, after
Judith in her plainness and her elegance, in
writing nasty verses about another paint-
her blood-letting calm and life-taking power,
er’s altarpiece.
the two artists were found guilty of libel for
all of it, seems to beg the question: Is this a task appropriate to women?
Note that I’ll refer to Artemisia by her
Is beheading?
her painter-father and because first names
first name, both to distinguish her from are often standard for the Italian greats:
Is painting?
Dante, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Madonna, and so on. It’s true that Caravaggio is known by the name of his birthplace,
*****
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but that’s because Michelangelo was already
Artemisia was rarely out in public. She was
taken.
mostly secured at home or in her father’s studio, as was culturally expected. Think
To his credit, Orazio recognized early that
of all those high-walled gardens and nearly
his own child, though a girl, was very good.
impregnable homes of Romeo and Juliet,
Artemisia was the oldest of four and his
or the fact that Dante only met his beloved
only daughter, but Orazio trained her from
Beatrice, a neighbor girl since childhood,
an early age in the art of painting. When
just twice in his entire life.
Artemisia was just twelve, her mother died, and so she spent the rest of her childhood
But even staying home could not protect
in a world of men. Not just her father and
Artemisia. When she was just seventeen,
brothers, but also her father’s students
her neighbor—an older woman named
and assistants and colleagues and models.
Tuzia, a friend to the motherless girl—
In coming centuries, one of the strenuous
slipped the instructor Agostino Tassi into
feelings against allowing women to study
the Gentileschi apartment through an
the creation of art was the coming and going
adjoining door. There, the older painter
of so many men in the “dark hallways” of
raped his student, while Artemisia called
academies, studios, and ateliers.
out for help that did not come.
At the death of his wife, another man
Artemisia’s account of the rape is heart-
might expect his only daughter to put away
breaking: Lifting my clothes, which he had a
childish things—drawing, paints—and take
great deal of trouble doing, he placed a hand
up some duty as woman of the house. But
with a handkerchief at my throat and on
Orazio recognized Artemisia’s talent and
my mouth to keep me from screaming. . . .
she became a valued member of his work-
I tried to scream as best I could, calling
shop. Her education must have included
Tuzia. I scratched his face and pulled his
artistic necessities like prepping canvases, mixing paints, life drawing, and the like, but
hair . . . After he had done his business he
as with most non-aristocratic girls, niceties
got off of me. When I saw myself free, I went
like reading and writing did not figure in. At
to the table drawer and took a knife and
the age of nineteen, Artemisia would tell a
moved toward Agostino, saying, “I’d like
Roman court, “I cannot write and I can read
to kill you with this knife because you have
very little.”
dishonoured me.”
Still, her father took her artistic education *****
seriously. As part of her training, Orazio hired his colleague Agostino Tassi, who specialized in illusionistic architectural
It’s crucial to point out here that what Tassi
paintings, to instruct Artemisia in the sub-
had done was not “rape” as we know it, but
tle details of perspective.
“defloration” or the “theft” of Artemisia’s
22
father’s property. That is: his only daugh-
me, and these are your promises”! Tassi was
ter’s virginity.
sitting in the courtroom.
Tassi knew he was in trouble. He’d broken
Possibly as torturous as the sibille itself
the law in depriving Orazio of his daughter’s
was the requirement that the teenaged
hymen, so he told Artemisia he’d marry her.
Artemisia endure two obstetrical exams to
If they married, then all was well. Arte-
confirm her “defloration.” The court notary
misia, who, under Italian law and church
was present, in order to record the find-
doctrine and social propriety and every
ings. The record shows that both midwives
other measurable yardstick of female ease
“touched and examined the vagina of Donna
in the world, was ruined otherwise, agreed
Artemisia Gentileschi” and found “that she
to the arrangement.
is not a virgin” on account of her “broken hymen.” One added, “And this happened a
Alas, after months of promises, it turned
while ago, not recently, because if it were
out that Tassi was already married. Orazio
recent one would recognize it.”
sued, offering up his “despoiled” daughter for legal, and very public, scrutiny.
Orazio won his case. This was due in no small part to his daughter’s fierce endur-
The seven-month trial that followed was
ance, but also because in the course of the
gruesome. To verify the truth of her rape
trial it came out that Tassi had contracted
account, Artemisia was subjected to torture
to have his wife murdered and had impreg-
in the form of the sibille, a kind of thumb-
nated his sister-in-law. He was an excep-
screw where chords are fastened to rings
tionally bad guy. It was a blessing that
around the fingers of one hand and then
Artemisia could not marry him.
tightened to excruciating degrees. It was the seventeenth-century version of a lie
Tassi was “banished” from Rome, which was
detector test, the legal gold standard for
never enforced, and he even worked with
truthfulness of its time. In agreeing to the
Orazio again on a commission. Economics
sibille, Artemisia not only accepted terrible
sometimes trump honor.
pain but also risked damage to her hand, an unthinkable fate for an artist. But to be
For her part, Artemisia was bundled off
believed, she had to endure it.
in marriage to a minor Florentine painter named Pierantonio Stiattesi within a month
Court transcripts record that midtorture,
of the trial’s end in 1612. By 1614, they were
when to every question asked by the court,
living in Florence.
Artemisia insisted, “It is true, it is true, it is true, it is true,” she suddenly broke off
In essence, Artemisia fled her Roman home
and cried out, “This is the ring that you give
where, no matter what the trial’s outcome,
23
her name was forever tainted. For centu-
Even an anatomical master like Michel-
ries her reputation as a “loose woman” was
angelo had some trouble with the female
remarked upon whenever her name was
form. Consider his tomb sculptures for the
resurrected by historians.
New Sacristy of San Lorenzo. There, the female personifications of Night and Dawn
What she fled to was an arranged marriage
have distinctly male-looking chiseled torsos
to a man her inferior as an artist and to a
beneath wide-set breasts that are as bul-
city that was the seat of Medici power. If
bous and affixed looking as any inept plastic
you are unfamiliar with the dangerous rep-
surgery. The lack of access to female models
utation of the Medicis, there’s a slim volume
explains the odd female anatomy of many
I can recommend called The Prince, written
Renaissance and Baroque nudes. (No one
by a Florentine official named Niccolo
can explain the plethora of strange babies.)
Machiavelli from his jail cell.
Artemisia was friendly with members of the
Artemisia was essentially alone in a volatile
Medici court, most notably Galileo Galilei,
new world. True, she had a husband, but
and the Medicis provided her with crucial
she was no longer her father’s daughter,
patronage. By 1616, just two years after
working under him in his studio. She had to
arriving in Florence, she was elected to
stand on her own merit as a professional,
membership in the Accademia del Disegno,
and secure her own commissions. She had
the first woman member since its founding
no choice but to proffer her talent and the
in 1563.
new style of Caravaggio, with its height-
But life was not, nor would it ever be, one
ened emotion and theatricality, at the feet of
of unbroken success. By 1624, the census
the Medicis. Fortunately, they liked it.
of her household makes no mention of her husband, who disappears from history
Florence was, on the whole, good to her.
entirely. By the time Artemisia painted the
Her mentor was none other than Michel-
Judith here, she had given birth to at least
angelo Buonarroti the Younger, grand-
four children, one of whom, a girl, was also
nephew of the High Renaissance master.
a painter. She’d also taken a lover. She was
Artemisia was one of the first artists he
her household’s only breadwinner, busy
commissioned for the frescoes of Casa
beyond belief with children and getting
Buonarroti, then being decorated in lavish
commissions and making paintings and, not
tribute to Michelangelo. Her contribution
always successfully, getting paid.
was, fittingly, a female nude. She was good at them. Because, unlike male painters, she
Artemisia painted her first version of Judith
had access to her own body and to those of
not long after the trial, a veritable proto-
female models (forbidden to men).
type of the painting here, which she did in
24
Florence after the birth of her children. She may have felt it suited Medici taste, with its high drama, opulence, and violence. Or maybe given her reputation, there was interest in a scene of implied revenge. I’d like to kill you with this knife because you have dishonoured me. Tassi had dark hair, and also a beard.
***** If it is difficult to look at Caravaggio’s full-lipped young men and not feel a sexual undercurrent (he may have been gay), then the case for reading a biographical urge into Artemisia’s work is even more tempting. A young woman experiences rape followed by Artemisia Gentileschi. Susanna and the Elders. 1610.
public torture and humiliation. Shortly afterward, she paints her first version of a scene
John Ruskin thought Botticelli’s version by
depicting a woman decapitating a bearded man.
far the best of a terrible tradition. If you
But Artemisia was hardly the first artist
don’t know Ruskin, he was a voluminous
to depict the story of Judith. It was long a
Victorian critic whose influence was vast.
popular theme. Caravaggio has a famous
(I can’t resist this take on him from a New
version, with a more typical Judith as a
York Times review of the Mike Leigh film,
lovely young thing (complete with erect
Mr. Turner: “Ruskin [Joshua McGuire]
nipples pushing through her blouse) and
appears as a pretentious carrot-topped
Abra as a Disneylike old crone. Less typical
nitwit with a voice like a posh Elmer Fudd.”
is that Caravaggio, like Artemisia, chose to
But I digress.) Ruskin complained of the
illustrate the moment of decapitation.
“millions of vile pictures” of Judith, specifically in Florence.
The vast majority of artists skirt the gruesome act: Botticelli has a beautiful Judith
But Ruskin was just one of many critics
swaying through a field with Abra carrying
of Artemisia’s Judith. The last Medici, the
Holofernes’s head in a basket perched atop her
Grand Duchess Anna Maria Luisa, loathed
own. They might have been out picking apples
it. And according to feminist historian
for the ruddy wholesomeness of the scene.
Germaine Greer, when British writer Anna
25
Jameson beheld Artemisia’s masterpiece in
Judith and Abra escape the enemy camp,
1882, she called it a “dreadful picture” and
bringing the head of Holofernes with them
of its maker, “a proof of her genius and its
as evidence of their triumph. Head in hand,
atrocious misdirection.”
they inspire their people to victory. For artists of the Middle Ages and Renais-
But why? Why despise Artemisia’s version
sance, the Judith story was akin to David
above the hundreds of Judiths (Ruskin said
and Goliath, a tale of the victory of weak-
“millions”) to come before hers?
ness over might. David was only a shepherd boy, and Judith was just a woman. But
*****
favored by God, they do the impossible, destroying otherwise invincible enemies.
This may be the moment to back up and ask, just who is Judith and why is she doing
*****
that very bad thing to the oddly named Holofernes?
When Artemisia was “rediscovered” in the twentieth century (not long after Caravag-
The story goes that Judith was a beautiful
gio himself) it seemed obvious in both a
Jewish widow living in the village of Bethu-
Freudian and a feminist sense to interpret
lia. Like all of Israel, her village was threat-
her powerful Judith Severing the Head of
ened by King Nebuchadnezzar, who sent his
Holofernes as a cri de coeur, a symbolic wish
Assyrian general Holofernes to destroy it.
fulfillment to hurt the man who made her
The Assyrians were unspeakably bad. The
suffer. In short: a painterly act of revenge.
kind of conquerors who would flay an entire army, then paste the human skins outside
This may be true. And it was likely viewed
their palaces like wallpaper advertising
that way even in her own time. But it
how badass they were. No one messed with
doesn’t explain Artemisia’s interest in other
Assyrians if they could help it.
great heroines, both before and after she
The Jews of Bethulia are rightly terrified,
explain why her Judith was so despised.
painted her first Judith. And it doesn’t
but their fear annoys Judith, so she sneaks into the enemy camp with her maidser-
*****
vant Abra and becomes friendly with the general, if you know what I mean. Her
Artemisia’s earliest dated painting is from
beauty inflames Holofernes, who goes about
1610, the year of Caravaggio’s death. She
seducing her. Pretending to be willing, she
was just seventeen. Susanna and the
gets him drunk. When he reclines on his
Elders also depicts a scene from the Catho-
bed, a come-hither or a nodding-off moment,
lic Old Testament. It’s the story of two older
Judith leaps upon him with a sword.
men who spy on a young woman bathing,
26
trump up a charge of promiscuity (punishable by death), then blackmail her to secure sexual favors. The painting is dated from before we know Artemisia experienced her own violation by an older man. But again, the Susanna motif had long been popular with artists, not least because there weren’t many opportunities for depicting the female nude outside of Eve, some unfortunate saints (Agatha, Barbara), and Venus. Though young, Artemisia shows a handling of anatomy that is already sure. And in this, her first professional picture, she already stakes out her vision of the ideal heroine. Susanna is solid, not soft. For the rest of Artemisia’s life, her heroines tend to this type of full-bodied but not overtly erotic women. Rather, they are heroic-size. Powerful, but in the sense of real power—physical, Artemisia Gentileschi. Self-Portrait as La Pittura. 1638–1639.
artistic—not sexually manipulative. She also establishes a new perspective for viewers. Susanna turns midwaist, cringing
Portraits of many formidable women
away from the men leering down at her. As
followed: Esther, Mary Magdalene, Cleo-
spectators, our point of view is allied with
patra, Lucretia, etc. A virtual pantheon of
the nude woman. We cringe with her, dis-
feminine power, one that included Artemisia
gusted, rather than voyeuristically eyeing
herself.
her nudity like another leering elder on the other side of the picture plane.
*****
All viewers of Artemisia’s time would have known the full story of Susanna. That she
While briefly reunited with her father in
refused sexual demands and risked death
England at the court of Charles I, Artemisia
as a result. Here the men are clothed and
painted a deceptively simple composition
she is naked, but ultimately Susanna is the
that contains multitudes: Self-Portrait as
powerful one. Willing to face death before
La Pittura.
dishonor, she is pardoned at the last minute when it’s discovered the elders have lied. Then
La Pittura is the Allegory of Painting,
they are the ones who pay with their lives.
female embodiment of the art itself.
27
Crucially, La Pittura is not a muse. She is no
I AM SHE, Artemisia claims a position that no male artist ever can.
female goad to the (almost universally) male artist. No, La Pittura is the art of Painting
The ideal of La Pittura had been around about a hundred years when Artemisia painted herself as such. La Pittura’s attributes were outlined in Italian Cesare Ripa’s influential emblem book (a text filled with allegorical figures embodying the arts and sciences, virtues, vices, and more), called the Iconologia. First published in the 1590s, Ripa’s book was widely consulted by painters, sculptors, and architects. In her own painting, Artemisia cleanly ticks off La Pittura’s attributes as codified in the Iconologia:
itself, with all the procreative power and mystery that evokes. It’s a radically simple canvas: the artist at work. And at the same time, Artemisia here is manifold and audacious. She is subject and object, creator and created. A deceptively uncomplicated and persuasive portrait of Painting herself, in the person of a painter and woman. By declaring that
Hair. La Pittura’s hair appears undone, indicative of creative passion. Embodied by Artemisia, this, we can imagine, is just how a woman at work looks: hair pulled out of the way, but not fussed over. She’s not there to be looked at, but to make something happen. She is the subject of this painting, not its vapid object. Chain. Around her neck, Artemisia wears La Pittura’s attribute of a gold chain with a mask charm. The mask symbolizes imitation, which, as a follower of Caravaggesque naturalism, is Artemisia’s forte. Naturalism continues in the casual hanging to one side of the necklace. It’s not there to make her more beautiful or more affluent looking, not even to call attention to the bosom across which it hangs. It hangs askew, unnoticed, as she works. Gown. Artemisia as La Pittura wears a green gown of some iridescent material that shimmers violet in places like a
Cesare Ripa. Cropped image of La Pittura from Iconologia. 1644.
28
sharkskin suit. This is the drappo cangiante, a garment of changing color, indicating a painter’s skill with color, amply on display by Artemisia here.
Virtually all depictions of La Pittura include this device. Artemisia refuses the gag.
The dress has three-quarter sleeves, giving the effect that she has “rolled up her sleeves” before the canvas. It’s both fitted through the torso and puffy in the arms, but somehow doesn’t look odd on a woman at work. Artists in self-portraits of this time, and later, often depicted themselves in fancy dress, to the point where your first reaction is, “You’re really gonna paint in that?” But such finery was a necessary conceit, a way to separate one sort of manual labor—painting or sculpting, say—from horseshoeing or bricklaying.
***** When I was a teenager, there was a bar my father liked called The Quiet Woman. Hanging in front was a wooden pub sign, of the kind found outside Ye Olde England–type alehouses. The sign consisted of the carved and painted outline of a woman’s body outfitted in seventeenth-century dress, with no head. There was the stump of a neck, but then nothing after. The Quiet Woman. Get it? *****
Hands. Artemisia’s left hand, holding her palette, rests on a solid table or stool, indicating her grounding in the material necessities of the craft, while her right hand is held high, grasping the brush. Here, where brush meets canvas, is where inspiration and intellect meet.
Artemisia Gentileschi was never quiet. She was instead the heroic center of her own art, fashioning a new language of womanhood, in action and in form. Her heroic women are not man-eaters, but man-beaters. That’s one reason why her Judith Severing the Head of Holofernes appalled so many for so long. Not only is a woman depicted performing a heinous act on a man, but also it’s a woman daring to depict it.
Face. The artist has done nothing to flatter herself in terms of appearance, and does nothing to seduce the viewer into admiring her. She looks away from us, lips closed, eyes intent on her work. A dark shadow falls along a third of her face.
Artemisia refused the gag. And from four hundred years away she speaks to us still, saying: Dare to be great.
But it is her face that tells everything. Here, Artemisia does omit one key aspect of La Pittura’s depiction that is called for by the Iconologia: the Allegory of Painting should be depicted with a gag around her mouth, because painting is mute.
29
CHAPTER 2:
JUDITH LEYSTER I can’t decide whether Leyster feels contemporary or makes me feel Old Dutch. —PETER SCHJELDAHL
E V E R R E A D T H E D A V I N C I C O D E , or
It’s a coup, no question. Dutch seventeenth-
see the movie? They both begin with the
century painter Frans Hals was hugely
gruesome murder of a Louvre curator. It’s
popular in late nineteenth-century France.
fiction, of course, but calls to mind real
His loose brushstrokes and lively subjects
Louvre crimes, like the famous theft of
(drunken duo, anyone?) appealed to Mod-
Leonardo’s own Mona Lisa in 1911 (recov-
ernist sensibilities. French Impressionists
ered two years later). Or less famously,
and Post-Impressionists loudly admired,
the 1893 discovery that the magnificent
and even copied, Hals’s work. And now not
new Frans Hals the Louvre had recently
only does the Louvre have a wonderful new
acquired was . . . not by Hals at all.
painting by the Dutch Golden Age master,
The “Hals” affair may be more boondoggle
but “one of the finest he ever painted.”
than crime, but still a novel- (or movie-)
Awesome.
worthy event. I picture the painting
The painting is bundled off to conservation
uncrated in a dim gallery. Slats of wood
(the smoke, sweat, and spit of centuries mar
eagerly pried apart, nails and boards left scattering the ornate parquet floor. Some-
its lively surface), where after painstaking
one pulls on white gloves and eases the
cleaning what’s revealed is decidedly not
painting from its protective bed. Those
the signature of Frans Hals. I like to imag-
assembled—all men—chuckle with undis-
ine the men of the Louvre gathering around
guised pleasure as the titular Carousing
the painting to take a look as the conserva-
Couple is held up to the light.
tor grimly points. 31
pioneering study of women painters, The Obstacle Race, “At no time did anyone throw his cap in the air and rejoice that another painter, capable of equaling Hals at his best, had been discovered.” ***** Judith Leyster. Born 1609 to a non-artistic Dutch family. Obtained her artist training from no one knows who. But by age twenty she’d painted her Self-Portrait, a precocious display of obvious mastery.
Judith Leyster. Monogram (detail of Carousing Couple). 1630.
Dressed in high style in a corseted wine- colored dress, accented with a most unsuit-
Right there, above the foot of the male half
able projecting collar and matching white
of the Carousing Couple. No signature
lace cuffs, Leyster is glorious in attire, and
at all, but a monogram of a strange sort
in attitude. She turns casually toward us,
of J with a star shooting out to the right.
painting arm balanced atop a pokey-looking
Unfortunately for the Louvre, this same J
chair finial. Her mouth is slightly open as
monogram has been noted before, by one
if to speak, and the start of a sly smile says
Wilhelm von Bode writing on the history of
she’s up to something.
Dutch painting a decade earlier. He decided the J referenced Frans Hals’s less esteemed
There is at least one joke in the painting.
brother, Jans. Bad news.
As New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl has pointed out, Leyster’s paintbrush, held
But von Bode was wrong. It was “worse”
with assurance in her beautifully rendered
than that. In the flurry of accusations and
right hand, aims directly at the crotch of the
the following trial—you’d need an Excel
merry fiddler on her canvas. Deep meaning?
spreadsheet to keep track of who was suing
Or a near-adolescent’s bawdy humor? Maybe
whom and where—the fabulously named
a little of both. In the phrase of my friend art
art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot
historian Mark Trowbridge, “This pipe is not
unraveled the monogram’s true source: a
just a pipe” (that’s a Magritte pun, for those
previously unknown woman painter named
keeping art history score at home). What-
Judith Leyster.
ever it means, the whole painting feels lively
The Louvre was pissed. Token reparations
and a little naughty. It makes me hope that
were paid. And then silence. In the words
if I’d been twenty in 1620s Haarlem, Judy
of feminist writer Germaine Greer in her
Leyster and I would’ve hung out.
32
Judith Leyster. Self-Portrait. c. 1630.
Her pointing paintbrush isn’t the only veiled
may have been a self-portrait—a fascinating
meaning in the painting. Infrared photog-
meta-portrait within a portrait—and that
raphy shows that the fiddler now depicted
covering her own face with that of a male fig-
was not Leyster’s first impulse. The musi-
ure was a premonitory act of self-effacement.
cian covers what was originally the face of a
In other words, Leyster predicted her own
young woman. Schjeldahl speculates that it
erasure from the history of art.
33
*****
plume so her work would not be ignored out of hand. Or possibly, as a painter with
There’s no question that Leyster under-
no connections in the art world, associating
stood the challenges for a woman artist, in
herself with the family brewery might offer
history and in the marketplace. By 1633, the
familiarity and notoriety. Hey, beer sells.
year of her Self-Portrait, Leyster had joined
Whatever the reason, Leyster used her
the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke as just its second female painter ever. It’s possible that
monogram from the outset. Her earliest
utilizing a monogram—a conjoined JL, plus
known paintings, Serenade and Jolly Top-
shooting star—rather than her signature
per, both from 1629, are signed with it. And
may have been aimed at a marketplace not
thank goodness. Without her unique symbol,
quite ready for a talented woman painter.
Leyster might be entirely lost. As Virginia Woolf famously laments in A Room of One’s
Leyster came of age in a peaceful era of
Own, “For most of history, Anonymous was
rocketing prosperity for newly independent
a woman.”
Holland. For the first time in Western history, artists didn’t depend on the wealth of
*****
the church or aristocratic patrons. Instead, they competed in an open market increas-
Within a decade of her rediscovery in 1893,
ingly interested in status luxury goods,
Leyster was embraced by a women’s move-
from tulips to oil paintings. It was an era
ment looking to find inspiring forebearers.
of upheaval and unheard-of social mobility.
She was included in early twentieth-century
Both essential if you are, say, the eighth
retrospectives on women in art, and the
of nine children in a cloth-manufacturing
first doctoral dissertation on Leyster was
family, a girl, and it turns out you want to be an artist.
written in the 1920s by a female student.
Her family embraced the prosperous
It took longer for mainstream art history
moment, changing its name (from Willemsz
to acknowledge her. Whitney Chadwick, in
to Leyster) and its business (from weaver to
her survey Women, Art, and Society, quotes
brewer), and Judith emulated their example
James Laver from 1964: “Some women
by futzing her own identity on canvas. The
artists tend to emulate Frans Hals, but the
new family name, and also the name of their
vigorous brushstrokes of the master were
brewery, meant “Lodestar” or “Leading
beyond their capability. One has only to look
Star.” It’s a statement, and so is Leyster’s
at the work of a painter like Judith Leys-
use of a monogram that is both distinctive
ter to detect the weakness of the feminine
but somewhat opaque. She is a leading star.
hand.” Typical but without merit. Leyster
She is also mysterious. Maybe, like women
was tough enough for ten Lavers. Even her
writers such as George Sand and George
earliest work reveals a bold, independent,
Eliot, she assumed a non-feminine nom de
and preternaturally self-assured artist.
34
The Leyster/Hals comparison is common. She did her share of jolly genre scenes— drinkers, lute players, fiddlers—reminiscent of Hals (her Self-Portrait is a type pioneered by Hals: a sitter captured mid-turn as if greeting the viewer), but her work could also be radically unlike his, anticipating the quiet, tense interiors of Vermeer. Leyster’s tiny masterpiece, The Proposition, just 1 ft/30 cm high and less than 1 ft/30 cm wide, is one example. Here, a woman in a white smock sews intently by candlelight while a bearded older man in a fur hat leans over her, touching her shoulder with one hand and offering her money with the other. She ignores him. He insists, casting a dark, looming shadow. Candlelight highlights the coins thrust beneath the woman’s face. At her feet, a brazier glows beneath her skirt.
Judith Leyster. The Proposition. c. 1631.
The room must be cold. She could probably use the money.
probably now better translated as a single
It’s a creepy, unsettling scene, ripe with
word starting with f.
Mephistophelean overtones. The man is
Regardless, in seventeenth-century
temptation, no doubt. The fur hat, strange
Holland, needlework was something all
indoors, implies wealth, but also some-
proper women, highborn or low, should do
thing else. It looks foreign, at least very un-Dutch. From where does this dark
well. Something a well-brought-up woman
stranger hail? At any rate, the older man
took pride in. It’s Leyster’s innovation to
does not seem to belong next to the much
insert this virtuous activity into a scene
younger woman, who rebuffs his offer by
of seduction that would usually take place
focusing on her work.
in a brothel or bar. There, the come-on is depicted as welcome, a lark, some fun.
Sewing—the old in and out—can easily be
But in Leyster’s scene it is unwanted,
construed as a sexual metaphor. In fact
unacknowledged, and, as the dark shadow
(thanks again, Dr. Trowbridge), the medi-
implies, sinister.
eval Dutch word for sewing was slang for “making carnal union.” In modern Dutch,
In other words: this scene is from the
sewing is still used the same way, though
woman’s point of view.
35
Rembrandt’s lover. Or no, she was Hals’s lover. There is in fact no more evidence that she was romantically involved with either man than there is of a love affair between Hals and Rembrandt themselves. It is a wholesale fantasy based on the fact that she was a woman, they were men, alive in the same nation in the same century. They must have had sex. Though there was no romance between Leyster and Rembrandt (or Leyster and Hals or between Rembrandt and Hals or, oh, never mind), there was romance between Leyster and another Haarlem painter (sex, too). It’s impossible to know whether this was good or bad for Leyster personally. But for the history of art, the line is pretty clear: all but two of Leyster’s known works were painted between 1629 and 1635. On June 1, 1636, Leyster married fellow painter Jan Miense Molenaer. He was more successful than she was in terms of
Judith Leyster. Early Brabantian Tulip. 1643.
sales, though her inferior as an artist. We don’t know why there are no Leysters from
It’s tempting to read The Proposition as a
the six months before her marriage, though
parable of the artist, resisting easy money
things for Haarlem painters were difficult
and sticking with her creative work. Maybe
just then due to an outbreak of plague. The
saying, too, that a woman painter is as vir-
Guild of St. Luke suspended its annual dues
tuous as any seamstress.
that year and the following, as its members found it difficult to generate income in a city
It’s also tempting to see it as a preemptive
more concerned with survival than pretty
rebuff to the assaults on Leyster’s reputa-
pictures.
tion far in the future.
Possibly to escape the plague and in pursuit *****
of a better art market, the newlyweds moved from Haarlem to Amsterdam within
Not long after her resurrection from a
months of their marriage. There, Leyster
historical black hole, people began concoct-
gave birth to five children between 1637 and
ing all kinds of liaisons for Leyster. She was
1650: Johannes, Jacobus, Helena, Eva, and
36
Constantijn. Only Helena and Constantijn
Leyster already had other children, along
survived to adulthood.
with her newborn, but in some hours of peace, or some way amid the chaos of family
Historians tut over Leyster’s loss of self on
life, Leyster painted this flower: simple,
becoming a wife, as if she willfully threw
well observed, lovely.
away the artist part of her when she got together with Molenaer. But first it was the
Tulip is in all essential ways the opposite of
plague, and then wooing and a wedding,
her renowned genre paintings, imparting
and then moving to a new city, and then her
no parable or moral, symbol of nothing but
first pregnancy. And my God, five children!
itself. Beautiful, if slight.
When my two children (two!) were young, I
For a century, Leyster’s Tulip was believed
mostly stopped writing for six years. I sim-
to be her final work, a lovely though insuf-
ply couldn’t manage the time and attention
ficient coda for a career that began in bril-
to art, and the time and attention young
liance and abundance. Then in 2009, a still
children required. How much more impossi-
life by Leyster done in 1654 was discovered
ble for Leyster with five? And not just the
in a private collection, painted eleven years
pregnancies and births and babies and tod-
later than Tulip.
dlers and the household and her husband’s studio and perhaps her own studio, but the
*****
impossible loss, the terrible grief. Yes, what of the deaths of her children, something not
So Leyster did not stop painting. There
once mentioned in any of the many thou-
must be more Leysters in the world than
sands of words I’ve read on Leyster?
we know.
Should we be shocked if her oeuvre stopped
I picture a painting uncrated in a sky-lit gallery. Slats of wood eagerly pried apart, nails and boards left scattering the floor. Someone pulls on white gloves and eases the painting from its protective bed. The assembled curators—all women—lean in. A collective gasp. That monogram—“J+L” with a star shooting to the right like an arrow bursting from its bow—they recognize it instantly. Judith Leyster. Stunned silence. Then hugs all around. Then carousing worthy of a Dutch Golden Age master.
abruptly with marriage and family? Saddened at such artistic loss, yes, but surprised? How could Leyster have gone on? But somehow, she did. For a long time, the only known work signed by Leyster after her marriage was a watercolor from 1643 of a lone tulip. According to Leyster scholar Frima Fox Hofrichter, if painted from life, then Tulip was done in April that year, the flower’s blooming season, shortly after the birth of Helena, her daughter who would live.
37
CHAPTER 3:
ADÉLAÏDE LABILLE-GUIARD She had rendered even more faithfully than the glimmer of silk and velvet and the froth of lace the impression of an earnest, recollected personality, whose will and courage are overlaid by patience and steadfastness. —GERMAINE GREER
AT A G E T W E N T Y-T H R E E I began near-
Rosenblum seemed to embody the ultimate
daily visits to eighteenth-century painter
in worldliness: European in his erudition,
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s Self-Portrait with
American in his earthiness. Short, spiky
Two Pupils (see page 40) in the Metropoli-
hair, an amused pose, he was impossibly
tan Museum of Art. This went on for a good
kind to me and I have no idea why.
five years. A conservative estimate would
Still, I almost didn’t get into the seminar
put me at, say, twelve hundred viewings.
where I discovered Labille-Guiard. “I’m sorry,” Rosenblum had said when I’d handed
In the fall of 1990 I’d been assigned Labille-
him the form requiring his signature to
Guiard in Robert Rosenblum’s graduate
enroll, “but you haven’t even had a class
seminar on Jacques Louis David. I’d never
with me yet.”
heard of her, did not recognize her work. Rosenblum I knew about before even get-
I imagined I was easy to turn away: long
ting to the Institute of Fine Arts. He was
hair dyed jet black, a nose ring (when this
one of two professors there (Kirk Varnedoe
was unusual), red lipstick, granny boots,
the other) who was both hallowed-be-thy-
and a leather jacket with Edvard Munch’s
name art historian and pop-culture cool.
The Scream charmingly superimposed upon
When Andy Warhol’s diaries were published
a mushroom cloud. I’d sat in Rosenblum’s
in early 1991, Rosenblum had his own entry
Neoclassicism lecture the entire previous
in the index.
semester and he hadn’t noticed. In essence,
39
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761-1818) and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788). 1785.
40
*****
my greatest fear. I was invisible. While my fellow students had attended Ivies or powerhouse liberal arts colleges like Vassar, Ober-
Raised mostly in Montana, with some years
lin, and Carleton or overseas eminences like
in California beach towns, I’d had contact
the Courtauld and the Sorbonne, I’d gone to
with fine art, but 99 percent of it was slides
UC Santa Barbara. I came from nowhere,
or printed reproductions. I told myself this
had zero connections, did not matter.
was fine: reproductions were tidy, and slides tiny reliquaries, uncorrupted and jewel-like.
“I took Neoclassicism!” I yelped, thrusting
In many ways, ideal.
the paper at poor Rosenblum. “I got an A.” I really said that. Rosenblum, startled,
I was wrong. What I discovered as a grad
looked back with amusement and pity. Then
student in New York was the necessary and
reached for the pen.
exhausting emotion of confronting art itself. The messy, sexy, physically unnerving shock
The first day, Rosenblum’s PhD students div-
of the real. That paintings can seduce you,
vied up aspects of David’s oeuvre, followed
sicken you, haunt you.
by his immediate predecessors, famous peers, and acolytes getting snatched up
Nearly seven feet high and five feet wide,
around the table until there seemed nothing
Labille-Guiard’s multi-figure composition is
left. My fellow students were, I believed,
meant to grab you. Its full title is Self-
smarter and savvier. They were certainly
Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle
more self-confident. But then Rosenblum
Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761-1818) and
reached into his breast pocket, dug out a
Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond
slide, and slipped it into the projector. Up
(died 1788), which matters because the
came Self-Portrait with Two Pupils.
younger women are central to the point. They stand behind their teacher where, in a
He looked at me across the big round table.
self-portrait by a male artist, we might find
“Adélaïde Labille-Guiard,” he said. “She
a female muse (see Courbet’s The Artist’s
wasn’t strictly a follower of David, but she
Studio, for a standard, if witty, example).
survived the Revolution and this terrific
Her students are lovelier than the woman
painting is across the street.” He gestured
who has painted them, though their dresses
toward Fifth Avenue. “How’s your French?”
are many shades more demure. Labille-
he said.
Guiard protects their modesty.
French was a requirement of the seminar.
Mlle. Capet looks over her teacher’s shoul-
I’d passed my reading exam, though just
der, openly admiring the canvas we can’t
barely. “It’s good,” I said.
see, while Mlle. de Rosemond stares out at
Rosenblum popped out the slide and handed
us, frank and confident. The young women
it over. It was a gift.
have their arms around each other, and lean
41
in toward their teacher in a circle of mutual
Labille-Guiard’s flamboyant finery. Some-
support. They’ll need it.
times said how amazingly like real silk her dress was, shimmering unevenly with
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils was first
reflected light. It took everything not to
exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1785.
offer an impromptu tutorial utilizing the word reflet.
Salons were official exhibitions for members of the exclusive Royal Academy of Painting
The bald man with a fanny pack, the tall one
and Sculpture. They were every-other-year
squinting like a critic with a pince-nez, they
affairs, a cross between the Oscars and the
loved to sigh dismissively before her. “Isn’t
Olympics. A place to bring your best game,
that just like a woman? So vain.” Other
win glory, be admired and lauded. And like
typical barbs: “Why is she wearing a hat
any red carpet today, also a place to be
indoors?” and “For all that effort, she’s not
mocked, derided, and taken down a notch.
much of a looker.”
Exhibiting at the Salon was not for the faint
I took it all very personally. Labille-Guiard’s
of heart.
painting embodied everything I longed for: Talent. Passion. Courage. Also I thought we
It was never intended for a woman.
looked alike, with our heavy-lidded eyes in soft, pale faces.
*****
*****
I visited Labille-Guiard’s portrait the way you replay a favorite song, craving its emo-
I could not get enough of her, stalking
tional hit. I visited before or after classes,
every sketch, pastel, painting, and possible
or on study breaks. After grad school I
attribution, every street, teacher, friend,
worked at the Met, so lunchtimes I climbed
and correspondent. A sense of duty (and
the Great Hall’s big marble staircase to
mad pleasure) urges me to write Labille-G’s
peek in on her, though the cafeteria was in
500-page biography, but in fairness to this
another direction entirely.
book’s other artists, the CliffsNotes:
I sensed she recognized me, the way you
Labille-Guiard was born in 1749 and raised
might feel if you paid regular visits to an
in a neighborhood near the Louvre—itself
animal in the zoo. There was a flicker of liv-
used at the time as a residence for artists.
ing intelligence behind those painted eyes.
Her father was a cloth merchant to the
In all of New York, standing before her portrait was where I felt most seen.
French aristocracy. They counted on Claude-
When other museumgoers inevitably
girls (Jeanne Bécu, a.k.a. Madame du Barry,
wandered over, they distracted and
worked in his shop before taking up her
annoyed me. They giggled and cooed over
infamous stint as King Louis XV’s mistress).
Edme Labille for pretty wares and pretty
42
The youngest of eight children, Labille-
But the younger Vincent did not allow his
Guiard was the only child to live well into
old friend to fall far behind. By 1777, he
adulthood. And when she was just nineteen,
was back from some years in Italy study-
her mother died.
ing Renaissance and Classical art, ready to teach her everything he’d learned. And
Longing to become an artist, Labille-Guiard
according to gossip, sharing more than that.
had contrived to study with neighbors since the age of fourteen. Shortly after her moth-
There was an eighteenth-century version of
er’s death, in 1769, she married another
trolling that supported an entire economy of
neighbor, a bureaucrat with the Treasury
the most vicious satire. As a woman artist,
of the Clergy. He must have looked good
Labille-Guiard was an easy target.
at the time. In Catholic France, divorce was impossible, but by 1777 they’d legally separated. That same year, coincidentally
TO MADAME GUIARD
(or not at all) Labille-Guiard began studying oil painting with François-André Vincent,
What do I see, oh heaven! our friend Vincent
a childhood friend and the son of her first
Is no better than an ass?
teacher, miniaturist François-Elie Vincent.
His love creates your talent Love dies and talent is less Resign yourself proud Chloris
*****
Say your prayers, your De Profundis They’d both studied with his father, but François-André left his father and his friend behind when he was accepted to the
The anonymous writer of the above went on
Royal Academy’s prestigious art school.
to accuse Labille-Guiard of having Vincent
The school was barred to women, and
as a lover or maybe also two thousand
without Academic training Labille-Guiard’s
lovers. Said out loud, Vincent’s name sounds
own career stalled. She knew as well as
kind of like “two thousand” in French. In
anyone the immutable hierarchy of styles
other words, that Adélaide Labille-Guiard
that moved upward from lowly still life
is nothing but a slut. An untalented slut at
to animal painting to landscape to genre
that. For women artists the leap from inti-
painting to portraiture, and, finally, to the
macy with a man to being an untalented slut
ultimate achievement of history painting
has, in the public eye, never been a big one.
(big-ass canvases with a story to tell). To be a history painter meant mastering all styles,
Slut or not, she was shrewd. With no hus-
and required, among other things (such as
band to defend her, or support her finan-
education in mythology, history, theology,
cially, Labille-Guiard defended herself. By
literature, philosophy), access to the nude,
going on offense. Between 1782 and 1783
impossible for women.
she showed six portraits of important male
43
Academicians. It was a brilliant stroke,
with her husband’s profession). But this
securing valuable eyewitnesses to her
was the Royal Academy and what Queen
talent. If any man admired his portrait,
Marie-Antoinette wanted, she generally
he must admire Labille-Guiard’s ability
got. And what she wanted was her painter
as well.
in the Academy. One can imagine how little the Academy
*****
liked being forced to admit a woman, by a woman. They let Vigée-Lebrun (and her
The history of accusing women artists of
patron) know this by admitting Labille-
sleeping with their sitters is a long one, as is
Guiard on the very same day. Academy
the charge that some man has done a wom-
minutes specify that Vigée-Lebrun was
an’s art for her. But what I found early in
admitted par ordre (“by order”), while
researching Labille-Guiard and her female
after Labille-Guiard’s name it says, les
peers was the illogical claim of both. At the
voix prises a l’ordinaire (“vote taken in the
same time. In other words: She’s not the
usual manner”). Labille-Guiard gleefully
author of a given painting, but she is having
signed the register that day as Adélaïde des
sex with its subject. Her story was endlessly
Vertus. Adélaïde of the Virtues. Take that,
interesting, and often complicated—though
gossips.
not in the ways people chose to imagine.
Unfortunately, the Academy’s pleasure in
On May 31, 1783, Labille-Guiard was voted
their spiteful gesture was short-lived, and
into the Royal Academy. Just the twelfth
they quickly established a quota on women
woman member since its inception, she was
members. Four. By astounding coincidence,
admitted on the same day as her “rival,”
the very number of its current female
Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.
membership.
For as long as both women had exhibited *****
they’d been compared. One was mostly given good criticism only at the expense of the other, a practice not restricted to
At the next possible Salon, Labille-Guiard
art. Personal appearance was fair game, to
unveiled Self-Portrait with Two Pupils. It
Labille-Guiard’s disadvantage.
was an act of insurrection aimed straight at the Academy.
Vigée-Lebrun was pretty (verified by her self-portraits), wealthy, successful, and
Labille-Guiard depicts herself in high style
court painter to the queen. And she was
(Germaine Greer fabulously calls it “full
the wife of an art dealer. She was origi-
sail”) before her easel, wielding a painter’s
nally denied Academy membership on the
tools with casual competence. She holds
grounds that being in the “art business”
brushes and a palette. Resting across her
was forbidden (a woman was identified
lap is a long mahlstick, used to steady an
44
artist’s hand at work. It’s a typical prop,
women who are neither muses nor mere
one signifying “painter” (see Vermeer’s The
pretty objects. They are painters, active
Art of Painting or Sofonisba Anguissola’s
producers of art in their own right.
Self-Portrait).
By including Capet and de Rosemond in her
In the background is a classically inspired
composition, Labille-Guiard has brazenly
bust of her father. Nearly hidden in dark
defied the Academy’s quota on female art-
shadows behind him is a statue of a Vestal
ists. Two more women painters now hang on
Virgin, those antique exemplars of virtu-
the walls of the Academy’s official Salon.
ous unmarried women. On a low stool near
It’s a painting that says, in effect: Screw
Labille-Guiard’s feet lie scissors and a bolt
you. Followed by the emoticon of the paint-
of fabric, likely canvas. Sewing is often
er’s own visage: Smiley face.
linked with women in art. Take David’s famous Brutus, for example, where a
No wonder I couldn’t get enough of it.
centrally placed sewing basket divides the upright masculine world of war from the
*****
fainting female world of domestic grief. Labille-Guiard’s canvas and scissors, attri-
I traveled up and down Manhattan that
butes of an artist rather than a seamstress,
winter, intent on locating every potential
assert a new task as one appropriate to
source. There was no Internet, no laptops.
women.
Most stacks were closed and rarely could
Her elegant dress speaks to the elevated
books be borrowed. Xeroxing was almost
social position due an artist of her rank.
never an option; pens were banned. I
And it affirms her femininity. According
tromped, pencil in hand, to the New York
to exacting art historian Laura Auricchio,
Public Library, the Frick, the Morgan,
“The sweep of her luxurious silk dress
Bobst at NYU, and the Met, always hauling
catches the eye, and her breasts are prom-
along a big French dictionary. It was slow
inently featured at the very center of the
going, though my French improved by
composition—an X drawn from corner to
the hour.
corner would cross directly at her cleav-
One afternoon in the Met’s Watson Library
age.” So Labille-Guiard here embodies all
I wanted to hurl that dictionary at a cool
kinds of womanly virtue. She’s talented and
glass partition, dig pencil lead into the
fashionable, with a pretty great rack, as
pristine wood surface of the big table
well as a devoted daughter and teacher.
where I worked, and leave an ugly mark.
She never lets us overlook her heroic-size
I’d discovered how it was the Met came to
students, Mademoiselles Capet and de
own Labille-Guiard’s masterpiece. In 1878,
Rosemond, who share her stage. Young
her heirs had offered Self-Portrait with Two
45
one the daughter of the former king of France, but their portraits share so much. Both are full-length images of luxuriously attired women posed before easels. Both are unmarried and childless. Both have scissors and rolled-up cloth beside them. Behind both Adélaïdes, a Vestal Virgin. Above Madame Adélaïde is a carved frieze of her father, much as the bust of painter Adélaïde’s father hovers near her. The remarkable thing here isn’t so much that Labille-Guiard has presumed royal grandeur, but that Princess Adélaïde assumes the role of artist. The French nobility was bitterly divided between the current King Louis XVI, with his wife Marie-Antoinette, and the “old guard” of the Mesdames (the king’s aunts, of whom Mme. Adélaïde was one). The program for the 1787 Salon identifies
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. Portrait of Madame Adélaïde. 1787.
Labille-Guiard as the premier Peintre de Mesdames. Her ostensible rival, Vigée-
Pupils to the Louvre. It was refused. Not
Lebrun, was already painter to the queen.
good enough.
Vigée-Lebrun’s Marie-Antoinette Surrounded by Her Children also debuted at
*****
the 1787 Salon. They were hung essentially as matching pendants, and viewers were
Labille-Guiard’s artistic chutzpah wasn’t
encouraged to compare and contrast the
limited to personal causes. She was also,
female artists and their royal subjects.
quite happily, a brush for hire. Two years after Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, she
Vigée-Lebrun tried to boost Marie-
fired off another political shot: Portrait of
Antoinette’s reputation by depicting her
Madame Adélaïde at the Salon of 1787.
as the motherly type, gifting the future
Painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, meet Prin-
of France with her offspring. But Labille-
cess Adélaïde, daughter of King Louis XV.
Guiard’s childless Madame Adélaïde stakes
One the daughter of a Paris shopkeeper,
before three profiles (apparently created
out her own honorable position. She stands
46
Pietro Antonio Martini. Paintings Exhibition at the Salon of the Louvre. 1787.
by her own hand) in silhouette: her father,
toward the latter. Unmarried women can
mother, and brother. In other words, the
be brave and virtuous. Maybe even more
glory of France’s better past. Meanwhile,
virtuous than fertile queens.
the frieze running above Madame Adélaïde depicts a bedridden King Louis XV dying
*****
of virulent smallpox. But what is this? Just as the king has sent away his sons to save
Success at the Salon of 1787 led directly to
them from his cruel fate, his daughters rush
Labille-Guiard’s big break. Reception of a
to his bedside.
Chevalier de Saint-Lazare, by Monsieur, Grand Master of the Order would at last
The frieze might be interpreted two ways:
elevate her to the rank of history painter.
One, princesses are more expendable than
Commissioned by the Comte de Provence
princes. Or two, princesses are more badass
(the king’s brother), the painting was to be
than princes.
a massive 17-x-14-ft/518-x-427-cm group
On the whole, the painting asks us to lean
portrait celebrating his role as head of the
47
Knights of Saint-Lazare (a very old, by then
Vincent, in a home they rented (wisely) out-
mostly ceremonial order).
side Paris. Both were in perilous positions as former painters to the court.
But just a year into her grandest project, everything changed. The Storming of the
Amid such danger, Labille-Guiard did a
Bastille led to the Reign of Terror: sixteen
shrewd, familiar thing. Just as with members of the Royal Academy, she painted the
thousand enemies of the revolution guillo-
portraits of key deputies of the revolution’s
tined and twenty-five thousand executed
National Assembly. Including one Maximil-
by other means. The king and queen were
ien Robespierre, author of the Terror.
beheaded, of course, and so were friends of the aristocrats, like Madame du Barry. Art-
As with her earlier portraits, painting these
ists died, too, and many, like Vigée-Lebrun,
men made Labille-Guiard subtly allied with
fled. The Mesdames also made it out, taking
them. She needed such alliances. That she
money they owed Labille-Guiard with them.
survived the Terror is nothing short of incredible.
But Labille-Guiard stayed, together with
Amid other unwise acts, she continued to work on the monumental canvas celebrating the king’s brother. Even as the Mesdames and the Comte de Provence himself fled for their lives, she clung to her ambition. Her portraits of Robespierre and men like him may have saved Labille-Guiard’s life, but no one could save her history painting. On August 11, 1793, the Directory of the Department of Paris demanded she deliver “the large and small portraits of the former prince and all studies related to these works, to be devoured by flames.” She had no choice but to comply. Anything else would have been sure suicide. ***** I discovered the fate of Labille-Guiard’s painting after a long day of classes, followed by hours puzzling out details (Grand
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. Portrait of François-André Vincent. 1795.
Master of the Order?). By the time I left
48
“Where is it now?” His tone said he liked the painting.
the Institute, a bright moon was rising over Central Park.
“The Louvre,” I sighed, thinking but not adding: They don’t deserve it.
Marching along the cold avenues, then rattling on the subway back downtown, I couldn’t shake my depression. This was why Labille-Guiard was nearly lost to
*****
history. Her most ambitious work had been destroyed. And though she fought the Acad-
Weeks later, Rosenblum stopped me in the hall, handing me the slide of a painting possibly by Labille-Guiard to authenticate for a midtown gallery. The sort of task promising grad students were given. To be singled out for my work on Labille-Guiard felt like an art historical benediction, and I was grateful. Rosenblum was a kind and excellent teacher.
emy quota on women, that long fight came to nothing. Her students did not go on to glorious careers. She had no successors. ***** My seminar presentation was exhilarating and, at nearly two hours, exhausting. In the darkened room no one could see my sweaty
Just not, it turns out, my teacher. But he pointed the way to her.
hairline and flushed face, lipstick gone, mascara smearing, but I felt exposed. Such passion I knew was gravely unacademic,
I put the slide in the back pocket of my binder, and did not look at it again. I had already decided to follow Labille-Guiard, not study her. I wanted to be like her, to explore what talent might lie inside me with passion and courage. The way she’d taught me to. At the end of the school year I was leaving, to write.
maybe even unseemly. Lit up behind me was Labille-Guiard’s final painting of Vincent, from 1795. It’s a tender portrait of an aging fellow artist holding what power he still wields in a volatile world: paintbrushes and a palette. Unidealized and clear-eyed, it is nonetheless a portrait forged, like her career itself, in fierce loyalty and love. Maybe the only good thing to come out of the revolution for Labille-Guiard was the legalization of divorce. In 1800, after decades of devoted artistic and romantic partnership, she and Vincent were married. Labille-Guiard lived just three more years. From out of the dark, Rosenblum’s voice.
49
CHAPTER 4:
MARIE DENISE VILLERS Perhaps the greatest picture ever painted by a woman is the portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes. —T H O M A S B . H E S S , A R T N E W S
Its cleverly concealed weaknesses, its ensemble made up from a thousand subtle artifices, all seem to reveal the feminine spirit. —CHARLES STERLING, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
A S A B A B Y A R T H I S T O R I A N , I was
At lunch one day when still an undergrad-
taught that the very essence of my train-
uate—newly cocky about my acceptance
ing was in cultivating an unerring sense of
to grad school—I was eating at an outdoor
connoisseurship.
table with a new boyfriend (fellow art history student, now husband) when Professor
Um, what?
Alfred Moir came out, tray in hand, and asked to join us. I licked my teeth, feeling
Basically: knowing who made what, just
for lettuce bits. My boyfriend, a grad stu-
by looking at it. To be able to perceive, by
dent used to proximity with the great man,
attitude, gesture, mood, and style, what
was capable of inviting him to sit down.
belongs to whom. A lofty goal. Daunting. But when I got into grad school in New
Moir was a formidable presence, big-
York at an old-world bastion of connoisseur-
headed, bearded, and curly haired, as classi-
ship training, I believed such power would
cal and timeless looking as Laocoön (look it
someday be mine.
up). But he was also charming, earnest, and
51
funny. I couldn’t wait to drop my good news
painting, Portrait of Charlotte du Val
about going to New York.
d’Ognes, by father and undisputed master of eighteenth-century French Neoclassicism,
I finally did it, in some ham-handed look at
Jacques Louis David.
me gesture. Instead of heaping on praise, as every other person in the know had done,
The Met could hardly overstate the impor-
Moir pushed back his chair and crossed his
tance of the gift. The original press release
big arms. “The Institute, huh?”
(they had them already in 1917) announced, “As one of the masterpieces of this artist,
I nodded, awaiting congratulations.
the Fletcher picture will henceforth be known in the art world as ‘the New York
Moir nodded back. “You know the problem
David,’ just as we speak of the Man with a
with connoisseurship?”
Fur Cap of the Hermitage, or the Sistine
I did not. I had no idea there was a problem
Madonna of Dresden.” In other words, a
with connoisseurship.
landmark work in the Met’s already worldclass collection.
“It doesn’t take into account the artist waking up on the wrong side of the bed.” He
The press release also crowed over the
leaned forward and lifted a finger, as if to
impressive original price: “Mr. Fletcher is
shake it in my face. “It doesn’t consider the
said to have paid $200,000 for this great
really shitty day.”
David.” In 1971, Thomas B. Hess wrote, “The Fletchers paid the contemporary
Years later, when I’d discover that Moir had
equivalent of about $2 million.” So how
been one of the first Caravaggio scholars to
much would that be today? Who knows how
champion Artemisia Gentileschi, I’d think,
to even figure out such things? But let’s say
“Yeah! That’s my guy!” I was team Moir
it would be millions and millions in today’s
from that afternoon on.
dollars.
I never forgot it: The Really Shitty Day.
Why was Hess writing about the cost of the Met’s painting—a gift, after all—more than
Later it would occur to me, what about the
fifty years later?
opposite? The Day When Everything Goes Right. The Fucking Excellent Day.
Because, as it turns out, “the New York David” is not by David. It’s by a woman. And that changes everything.
***** In 1917, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in
*****
New York received what was, even by their august standards, a fabulous gift. One Isaac
Right away the Portrait of Charlotte du Val
Dudley Fletcher bequeathed a monumental
d’Ognes was one of the Met’s most popular
52
Marie Denise Villers. Portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes. 1801.
53
works. If they’d had merchandizing back
traditionally used to hold drawings. She
in 1917, it would have been slapped on
stares out so intently that we—or whatever
umbrellas and coasters and sold like beer
we stand in place of—must be the subject of
at a ballpark. Which is to say, widely and
her sketch. Her expression is impossible to
well. Generations of visitors penned letters
read. Is she smiling or serious? Thoughtful
telling the Met how they adored it, how it
or sad? She is mysterious. She might be
moved them, and what it meant to them.
called the Mona Lisa of the Met.
It is a haunting painting. Standing before
The simple chair where she sits is the only
it, it’s difficult to look away. For years I
piece of furniture in an otherwise empty
paused in front of the young and compelling
room. The wall behind her is dark, nothing
Charlotte du Val d’Ognes on my near-daily
to see, but there is a window and, looking
visits to Labille-Guiard’s Self-Portrait with
closely, the pane nearest to Charlotte is
Two Pupils. They hung on adjacent walls.
cracked. Through the broken pane we can
Sometimes I lingered with Charlotte for as
just make out a man and woman on some
long as I spent with Labille-Guiard, the rea-
kind of raised balcony, their indistinct faces
son I’d come. The feeling never left me that
turned toward each other. The woman in the
if the gallery would just clear out and leave
background looks to be dressed like Char-
me alone with her, she might speak. There
lotte in the foreground, in a white dress,
was something she wanted me to know.
with a rosy shawl around her shoulders.
Charlotte wears a simple white dress and
It’s a great painting.
hunches in a slightly adolescent, but not
But what does it mean? What’s happening?
un-winning, way. Her only adornments are
How are we supposed to understand it?
a rose-colored sash tied just below her small breasts, a simple brooch holding together
No one knows for sure. But had I encoun-
a scarf at her neck, and a single pin in her
tered it back when it was supposed to have
upturned hair. Thrown over the back of her
been by David, I know how I’d interpret it.
chair—she’s sitting on part of it—is a plain,
I’d say it was about a love affair. That the
solid-colored shawl that matches her ribbon.
woman in the background and the woman
This is not the fabulously attired artist
in the foreground are the same person, that
we’ve come to expect (compare to Judith
two separate moments in time occur within
Leyster, or Labille-Guiard nearby), though
the same picture, as in early Renaissance
this young woman is an artist.
paintings. See Masaccio’s Tribute Money for a good example.
In her right hand she holds a pencil or pen, and with her left she balances a large
And then I’d think that the broken window
cardboard folder across her thighs, of a type
symbolizes a loss of innocence, a sexual
54
awakening. Maybe the sitter’s mysterious
Charpentier. She’d shown work at the 1801
secret is that she’s pregnant. The picture it
Salon and her one known signed painting,
reminds me of most is on the other end of
Melancholy, also depicts a woman in white,
the century, Edvard Munch’s Puberty from
a bit hunchy, and looking to the right.
the mid-1890s, a painting unquestionably
Sterling was surprised when his possible
about sexual anxiety.
attribution was instantly taken as gospel. But it mostly was, and it was big news for
But, that’s me.
academic and mainstream publications alike.
And anyway, our painting is not by a man.
It was reported as fact in TIME magazine, and in the Saturday Review, where James
*****
Thrall Soby found “a certain poetic justice in the fact that an outstanding icon of a
The first frisson of dissent came from
masculine epoch is probably the work of a
within the Met itself. Charles Sterling, a
woman.”
French art historian who was at the Louvre
Still, no one much celebrated having found a
until fleeing the Nazis (along with most of
previously unknown painter who was equal
Europe’s Jewish artists and art historians,
to the great David. Though the public con-
probably the greatest boon American art
tinued to love the painting—they may not
has ever known and certainly the great-
have known David from Delacroix, at any
est for New York) and was after the war
rate—some academics had a change of heart
attached to both museums, made a star-
about the painting itself.
tling discovery. In 1947 he was preparing catalogs for the Met’s French paintings
Sterling (see start of chapter) said some
collection, when he found an engraving from
not-very-nice things, beginning with, “The
the official Salon of 1801. There, he saw
notion that our portrait may have been
something chilling: the David portrait of
painted by a woman is, let us confess, an
Charlotte du Val d’Ognes, depicted hanging
attractive idea.” Why attractive? Because it
on the Salon wall. Why was this a problem?
explains everything wrong with the work:
Because David had loudly refused to show
“cleverly concealed weaknesses” and “a
at the 1801 Salon. If the Met David was in
thousand subtle artifices” that all add up to
the engraving, then it had been in the Salon,
“the feminine spirit.”
which meant it was not by David.
In other words: Isn’t that just like a
In 1951, Sterling published a piece in the
woman?
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin revealing publicly that it was not by David
After the reattribution, scholars also would
and tentatively assigning it to Constance
claim they were never fooled. British critic
55
not by the famous painter, it wasn’t until 1977 that David’s name was removed from the bottom of the picture frame. ***** After he retired from museum work, Sterling crossed Fifth Ave and became a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts in 1969. I would attend grad school at the Institute twenty years later, when a woman named Margaret Oppenheimer was working on her PhD there. I didn’t know her (though wish I had), but that’s not the point. The point is that while still a doctoral candidate, Oppenheimer realized that Sterling was wrong (he would not have been surprised). By astounding coincidence—considering that less than 15 percent of the artists
Marie Victoire Lemoine. The Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter. 1789.
showing at the 1801 Salon were women— she discovered that the Portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes must be by another
James Laver wrote, “Although the painting
female painter, Marie Denise Villers.
is extremely attractive as a period piece, there are certain weaknesses of which a
About whom, little is known. Her maiden
painter of David’s caliber would not have
name was Lemoine and she went by “Nisa.”
been guilty.”
She was married to an architect. She came from a family of artists, and her two older
But none other than Bernard Berenson, one
sisters, Marie Elisabeth Gabiou and Marie
of the most renowned art historians of his
Victoire Lemoine, were also painters. Per-
day and famous for his work in attributions,
haps her mother, like my mother, believed
still considered it one of the greatest master-
girls are best named Mary.
pieces of all time. And so also continued to insist that it must be by David.
One sister, Marie Victoire Lemoine, has
It may be worth saying here that though
a Woman Painter, in the Met’s collection.
the Met itself had published in its January
It’s not found in the same grand gallery as
1951 Bulletin that the famous painting was
Villers’s painting, which hangs alongside
her own work, The Interior of an Atelier of
56
masterful portraits by David, Labille-
The only signed work by Villers in a major
Guiard, and Vigée-Lebrun. It is, in fact,
collection is Study of a Woman from Nature,
rarely on view. But Lemoine’s painting also
at the Louvre, where Sterling himself must
depicts a young artist, bent over a folder of
have seen it. It’s also a bit like the Portrait
drawing paper balanced on her thighs. And
of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes. A young
there the similarities end. It’s just not very
woman, this time mostly in black, facing
good.
right, bent over tying her shoe. Her face is similarly shaped to the Met painting,
Lemoine’s painting is thought to be a
her hair is also up. She looks out at us.
tribute to Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who, But there is no magic.
dressed all in white (not ideal for painting surely) with a long mahlstick in hand,
So how can the Met’s portrait possibly be by
stands before a canvas depicting the god-
Villers?
dess Athena, while her apprentice sketches at her feet. The student is believed to be Lemoine herself, and the painting a not entirely successful homage to her teacher. ***** But then, even Villers’s own paintings aren’t nearly as good as the one in the Met. Oppenheimer based her reattribution on an oil modello, a reduced-scale preliminary version, of a lost painting by Villers, A Young Woman Seated by a Window. It depicts a woman in white who looks similar to the sitter in the Met’s painting, down to a lovely oval-shaped face, updone hairdo, and the very same pin in her hair. What’s more, she wears white, her body hooks to the right, and she sits on a window seat. But even with all that, it’s hard to believe it’s by the same person. It’s bland and a little illustrate-y, more like a Maxfield Parrish print in my grandparents’ bedroom than the
Marie Denise Villers. A Young Woman Seated by a Window. 1801.
towering genius of Jacques Louis David.
57
Further sleuthing by Higonnet concludes that while the painting’s authorship should be transferred to Villers, the identity of the sitter remains Charlotte du Val d’Ognes. Both studied there at the time the portrait was done. Higonnet’s discovery helps us close an important gap in our psychic understanding of the painting: It’s the portrait of one young female artist by another. So it’s not about sexual anxiety after all, but about artistic anxiety. Though in the case of early nineteenth-century women artists, the two can hardly be untwined. For the vast majority of female art students then, giving in to romantic love meant giving up painting. And in Marie Denise Villers’s portrait, what separates the interior of the Louvre
Marie Denise Villers. Study of a Woman from Nature (also sometimes called Madame Soustra). 1802.
(where art is made and fame secured) from the outside world (of romance and domestic life) is a broken pane of glass.
*****
Charlotte du Val d’Ognes is an object
We need a closer look at the painting’s
lesson. Like so many women, she gave up
ostensible subject, Charlotte du Val
the dream of success as a professional artist
d’Ognes. In a Metropolitan Museum of Art
when she became a wife. Her giving up
lecture from 2014 (online, and well worth
is not surprising. Not just because social
seeing), art historian and consummate gum-
pressure bore down on women to put their
shoe Ann Higonnet describes traveling to
husbands and children before all else. But it
Paris in search of the very room where the
was also a terrible time to be a woman artist
young woman sits for her portrait.
in France. “Although politically advanced,” notes feminist art historian Linda Nochlin,
And finding it.
“the revolution was in many ways socially
It is a gallery of the Louvre itself. An ate-
conservative.”
lier dedicated to female art students, where they could receive instruction (separate
The gains that women painters like Labille-
and unequal) apart from male colleagues.
Guiard hoped to achieve never materialized.
58
In fact, things only got worse. By 1804, Napoleon had shut down every avenue of official education and exhibition for women artists in France. Not until the end of the century would women be admitted to the prestigious École des Beaux-Art. And only then because the rise of Modernism was making its sort of classical training obsolete. Villers had already been married five years when she painted the portrait of her fellow art student, Charlotte du Val d’Ognes. Her husband, it seems, supported her ambition. Villers carried on as a professional even as things in France became more difficult. Her last painting is dated 1814. She died seven years later. What happened in between is unknown, though of course, as we’ve seen, paintings are easily lost or misattributed. ***** So a singular moment in time is the secret of Villers’s marvelous, moving painting: two young women longing to make art found themselves in a brief period of opportunity, when instruction, exhibition, and even fame were possible. And in that moment, perfection happened. A Fucking Excellent Day. Longing and kinship and ability became great art. A masterpiece.
59
CHAPTER 5:
ROSA BONHEUR Mlle. Rosa paints almost like a man. —T H É O P H I L E T H O R É - B Ü R G E R
The fact is, in the way of males, I only like the bulls I paint. —ROSA BONHEUR
I N T H E S U M M E R O F 1 889, Rosa
Paris, including such vanguards of Mod-
Bonheur—mourning the recent death of
ernism as Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh,
her spouse—sought distraction in the Paris
Edvard Munch, and James McNeill Whis-
World’s Fair. Like le Tout-Paris, she took
tler. But it was Bonheur, animal painter of a
in the architectural debut of the Fair’s
passing era, who got Buffalo Bill’s attention.
succès de scandale—the Eiffel Tower—and
They shared a spirit. Cody: frontiersman,
then, if later depictions can be believed,
tracker, Pony Express rider, Army scout
she dragged her shrouded black visage to
during the Indian Wars, buffalo hunter.
the encampment of that great nineteenth-
Bonheur: painter, horsewoman, avid hunter,
century American entertainer, Buffalo Bill
lover of women, wearer of pants.
Cody. A riveting spectacle of shooting, roping, and cowboy versus Indian “battles,”
A telling American lithograph—featuring
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was just the
a long-dead Napoleon (bucktoothed and
thing to perk a person up. And Bonheur,
slouching like a sack of potatoes atop his
who’d long had a thing for America, and
horse), Buffalo Bill (strapping and hand-
an even longer thing for horses, was more
some astride his), and Bonheur (staring at
susceptible than most.
Bill while painting)—captures the feel of
Many remarkable artists visited the Wild
artist reads: Art Perpetuating Fame—Rosa
West show in the seven months it camped in
Bonheur painting Buffalo Bill—Paris 1889.
their first meeting; a banner beneath the
61
“Save the Rosa Bonheur and let the flames take the rest!” Buffalo Bill was a metaphor for all that America stood for; it’s no surprise Bonheur was drawn to the man. Bonheur thought of herself as a forward-thinking woman in the American vein. “If America marches at the forefront of modern civilization,” she said, “it is because of their admirably intelligent manner of bringing up their daughters and the respect they have for their women.” For its part, America always liked Bonheur back. America’s little girls played with Rosa Bonheur dolls then the way, a hundred years later, they would covet those that looked like Shirley Temple. Rosa Bonheur. Portrait of “Buffalo Bill” Cody. 1889.
***** Shortly after their meeting, Cody granted Bonheur total access to his Paris encamp-
Stepping through the front doors of the
ment. Bonheur made good use of her time
Metropolitan Museum of Art into the
there, completing some seventeen paint-
grandeur of the Great Hall, the first thing
ings, including a portrait of Buffalo Bill on
I looked for was Bonheur’s The Horse Fair
his favorite horse.
(see next spread). I was a twenty-something small-town girl in Manhattan, and that
It’s a straightforward picture of a man on
painting, hanging high above, reminded me
horseback, but Bonheur tips her hand as an
of where I’d started, Montana, where we
artist primarily interested in animals. While
kept horses in the small corral behind our
Cody glances to one side, maybe enacting
house. The art I’d grown up with—Russell,
the tracker he once was, his white horse
Remington, Curtis—was filled with horses,
meets our gaze.
shorthand for a disappearing way of life.
Bonheur’s equestrian portrait of Buffalo
Bonheur’s roiling horseflesh was very differ-
Bill became an American icon. Cody had
ent from the rangy mustangs and Appaloo-
the painting shipped straight away to his
sas I’d grown up with, on canvas or in fact.
wife. Years later, when he learned that his
Her muscular Percherons, native to France,
Nebraska home was in flames, he wired her:
were as fleshy and erotic as any Rubens or
62
Renoir in the galleries upstairs. But still,
an obvious example of extra-human propor-
they felt familiar. Passing beneath them was
tion. (Note that Aurelius is so supremely
a kind of blessing. They helped me believe I
badass, he doesn’t even need shoes.)
might belong there.
Bonheur’s grooms, on the other hand, are
I was hardly the first to fall under The
smaller than they should be in relation to
Horse Fair’s dramatic spell. Bonheur’s
the horses, and their mustachioed faces
enormous canvas—more than 8 x 16 ft/
are turned away or tucked in shadow. All
244 x 488 cm—was one of the most beloved
but one. Right there near the center of
paintings of the entire nineteenth century.
the canvas, smooth-faced, head tilted in
First exhibited at the Salon of 1853, The
the same sidelong gesture as the rearing
Horse Fair won instant popular and critical
white horse nearby. Art historian James
acclaim, and made thirty-one-year-old Rosa
M. Saslow contends that this “man” isn’t
Bonheur an international celebrity.
one. Because this is the only groom without facial hair and the only figure to lock eyes
The finished painting was a cannonball
with us as viewers—always a knowing
lobbed at the highest echelon of art. Roil-
gesture on the part of a subject—Saslow
ing curves of strength and splendor, the
convincingly argues that it is the artist her-
buttocks, bellies, and necks of Bonheur’s
self who meets our gaze. It seems Bonheur
muscular Percherons provide a rhythm
has created a secret self-portrait, saying, in
of curves across the massive canvas. This
effect, This is who I am. A bit masculine,
French breed—beloved of the emperor—is
in total control, and in the white-hot center
here lord of horses, lunging across ground
of things.
churned to dust under heavy hooves. Punctuating the rhythm of the enormous mounts
The Horse Fair was the rare Salon painting
are the white and blue smocks of their more
admired by artists, critics, and the public
diminutive handlers. Bonheur’s horses rear
alike. Delacroix—undisputed king of Roman-
this way and that, displaying her anatomi-
tic painting—wrote approvingly of it in his
cal skill. The fact that they are oversize in
journal, and even the emperor and empress
relation to the humans among them can be
cooed over it. The emperor did not, how-
no accident.
ever, approve the ample size (and audacious display of flesh) of Realist artist Gustave
It’s something of a convention in Western
Courbet’s Nude Bather at the same Salon.
art to depict a heroic-size (i.e., bigger than
He gave Courbet’s canvas an irritated slap
life) rider on a life-size mount. This empha-
with his riding crop, while the empress slyly
sizes the mastery of man, since it’s too easy
inquired, “Is that a Percheron, too?”
for a spindly, near-hairless human to be upstaged by a big ol’ muscled horse. See the
She was poking fun at the monumental
Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius for
curves of Courbet’s nude, but it’s true that
63
Rosa Bonheur. The Horse Fair. 1852–1855.
64
65
Bonheur’s horses are pretty sexy. And just
years for women artists after Napoleon, and
as girls of a certain age love horses, so do
was born in the hinterlands of Bordeaux.
royal women. When The Horse Fair trav-
Her father, a not-very-successful painter
eled to England, Queen Victoria commanded
named Raimond Bonheur, married one of
a private viewing. And when Empress
his pupils, Sophie, and they produced four
Eugenie briefly served as regent in the
children. The marriage certificate lists Rai-
emperor’s absence, she bestowed the Cross
mond’s occupation as “history painter,” that
of the Legion of Honor on Bonheur, who
high-flown style well on the wane in Paris.
became the first woman ever to receive the
When Rosa, the eldest, was just six, Rai-
illustrious medal. The award, said Empress
mond left his young family for the capital
Eugenie, proved that “genius has no sex.”
of art. He meant to send for them when he found work. After a year they came anyway.
In America, reproductions could be found throughout the country, from post offices to
Raimond hadn’t done much art in his year
schoolhouses to Elks lodges. The original
away. Instead, he’d fallen feverishly in
ended up in the United States after it was
love with Saint-Simonianism, a utopian
purchased by one of the richest men in
quasi-religion with a radical social agenda
American history, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and
preaching, among other things, total equal-
gifted to the Met. Its landing in a foreign
ity between the sexes. Which should have
museum troubled its French author not
been great for Sophie, who was raising four
at all. She’d offered it to her birthplace of
young children without a hint of help. Real-
Bordeaux at a reduced price, but the town
ity was, of course, otherwise. “My father
fathers had passed. Tant pis.
was a born apostle,” Bonheur wryly told
Bonheur was once among the most celebrated
her biographer. “He loved us impulsively,
artists in the world, but her art—big and
but his first priority was social reform. He
muscular and naturalistic—was not where
never sacrificed noble ideals to personal matters.” Though Saint-Simonianism never
French art was headed: to Impressionism
aided Sophie, her eldest child embraced its
and Post-Impressionism, Pointillism, Fauvism,
spiritual impulse and its creed of gender
and the like. She, like many other once-great
equality.
Academic painters of the nineteenth century, became something of an art historical
When at age eleven Bonheur lay near death
footnote. They’d bet on the wrong horse, so
with scarlet fever, her mother nursed her
to speak.
tirelessly. Unlike many children in the neighborhood, Bonheur survived. But soon *****
after Sophie herself fell ill and died, likely from exhaustion. Bonheur never forgot
Her fame could not have been more
her mother’s punishing existence, claiming
unlikely. Bonheur came of age in the dark
that’s why she never married (by which
66
she meant become the wife of a man). But
“Couldn’t I become famous,” Bonheur once
she believed Sophie was always with her, a
asked, “by just painting animals?”
guardian angel guiding and gifting her life.
She could, Raimond assured her. And with Saint-Simonian fervor, he declared, “Maybe,
*****
daughter, I’ll fulfill my ambitions through you!” Icky or awesome, it was a vote of confidence
Belief in her mother’s divine intervention
in a young female artist just starting out.
was likely one source of Bonheur’s unwavering self-confidence. Art and animals and
Women. When Bonheur was fourteen, she
women were the entwined passions of her
caught sight of her father painting the
life; no social conventions impeded their
portrait of a younger girl in his studio.
pursuit.
I imagine Bonheur, stocky and normally self-assured, peeking from behind a curtain
Art. Raimond’s four children with Sophie
at a sickly Nathalie Micas, prostrate on a
all became artists. The Bonheurs became so
chaise longue. Nathalie’s parents feared
renowned that Francis Galton (a cousin of
their daughter might not live much lon-
Darwin) wrote an 1869 essay called “Hered-
ger, so had asked Raimond for a painted
itary Genius” that touted the Bonheurs as
memento.
living examples.
Behind the curtain, Bonheur held her
Rosa had started them off. After she
breath. She recognized Nathalie from a
was kicked out of even progressive co-ed
dream. At once she believed her mother had
schools, and bullishly resisted being appren-
sent the younger girl to her. It was love at
ticed to a seamstress, Raimond resigned
first sight. Bonheur became her protector,
himself to becoming her teacher. He sent
while Nathalie looked after her motherless
her to the Louvre for long days of sketching
friend. When Bonheur was old enough to
alone from the Masters, and corrected her
rent her own studio, Nathalie visited every
drawings at night.
day. Their bond was so obvious that on his
Animals. Always resistant to traditional
deathbed Nathalie’s father had the girls
education, Bonheur learned to read as a
kneel before him, then consecrated them
child only after her mother created an
to each other for life. It was a marriage in
alphabet of animals to spark her inter-
everything but legal papers.
est. When she was a teenager, her father
Nathalie did not die young. She remained
allowed a menagerie in their Paris apart-
steadfast at Bonheur’s side for more than
ment that included “rabbits, chickens,
fifty years.
ducks, quails, canaries, finches, and a goat” that needed to be carried down six flights of stairs to the street for an occasional airing.
*****
67
Rosa Bonheur. Ploughing in the Nivernais. 1849.
Their unconventional marriage came just a
d’Orsay one rainy November in Paris. I
year before Bonheur’s first great public suc-
sensed the steam rising from those sweaty
cess, Ploughing in the Nivernais, unveiled
flanks, smelled their earthy, pungent scent.
at the Salon of 1849. On a clear fall day, a
These were noble creatures of admirable
dozen Charolais oxen (native to Nivernais)
will and intelligence. PETA could only hope
yoked in pairs plow the soil in preparation
for a propagandist today as convincing as
for winter. Rich, turned-over earth fills the
Bonheur.
foreground while muscled animals march
It’s often noted that humans mostly take
the middle. They are the heroes of the
second place to animals in Bonheur’s work.
scene. The farmers and drivers with them
Ruskin (remember him?), who dined with
are mostly tucked beneath wide-brimmed
Bonheur once, later disparaged this ten-
hats or behind the oxen’s majestic bulk.
dency in her: “No painter of animals ever
Bonheur more than ennobles the beautiful
yet was entirely great who shrank from
creatures doing God’s work under a clear
painting the human face, and Mlle. Bonheur
autumn sky. She loves them. Adores their
clearly does shrink from it.”
fleshy ox bodies and big bovine heads. She
For her part, Bonheur was unimpressed
makes us love them, too.
with the eminent critic. “He is a gentle-
Though raised on a dairy farm, I never
man,” she conceded after their dinner, “an
saw the worthiness of cows until standing
educated gentleman, but he is a theorist.
before Bonheur’s painting at the Musée
He sees nature with a small eye, just like a
68
bird.” Bonheur knew animals. And she knew art from the position of the painter, not the theorist. She was no birdbrain. Bonheur was fond of characterizing people as animals, including herself. In letters and other writing she variously refers to herself as a dog, a calf, an owl, a donkey, a boar, a tortoise, a bear, and no doubt more. But the animal she felt most kinship with was the ox or bull. So is it any surprise that the heroic center of Ploughing in the Nivernais is no farm boy, but a great white ox who seems to have caught sight of us from the other side of the picture plane? There’s beautiful intelligence, and personality, in those bovine eyes. What is a painter, or any artist, if not one who sees?
Édouard Louis Dubufe. Portrait of Rosa Bonheur. 1857.
It seems to me that Ploughing in the Nivernais is, again at least in part, a self-portrait.
and John each have a corresponding symbol:
When Édouard Louis Dubufe painted
man, lion, ox, and eagle, respectively. As
Bonheur in 1857, she didn’t like his depict-
authors of the Gospels, the Evangelists
ing her leaning on a “boring table.” With
are usually depicted with a book, a writ-
Dubufe’s permission, Bonheur herself
ing instrument, and their symbol nearby.
painted in a lovely brown bull cuddled at
Note that Saint Luke is represented by the
her side instead, her painting hand draped
ox. Saint Luke is also the patron saint of
over its broad, hairy neck. And while
artists.
Dubufe’s Bonheur stares a little vacuously into the distance (shades of fashion models
*****
to come), Bonheur’s bull engages us with frank intelligence.
Perhaps such saintly connotations offered
An odd couple at first glance, Bonheur with
a counter-narrative to Bonheur’s many
her bull would be familiar to anyone raised
public “unorthodox” habits. The smoking,
in Catholic France from depictions of the
the cropped hair, the wearing of pants—all
four Evangelists. Matthew, Mark, Luke,
taboos for women, some illegal.
69
Bonheur’s excuses always sounded valid
dozens, and three wild mustangs sent by an
enough: She wore her hair short because,
American admirer.
after her mother died, “who was going to
When Nathalie’s mother died in 1875, things
take care of my curls . . . ?” Perhaps true at
went on much as they always had. Rosa and
age eleven, but she was still wearing short
Nathalie were the original Gertrude Stein
hair when she died six decades later.
and Alice B. Toklas, a woman artist and
As for her preferred attire, according to
her helpmeet living life (and loving each
Bonheur, only by dressing as a man could she
other) on their own terms in the French
move among the rough throngs at slaughter-
countryside. Nathalie managed the house
houses and the horse fair “unmolested.” In
and menagerie, while Bonheur painted and
other words, office casual was essential to
hunted in Fontainebleau’s famous woods,
her art.
thanks to special dispensation from the emperor.
By 1850, Bonheur had received a Permis-
When Nathalie died in the spring of 1889,
sion de Travestissement—cross-dressing
Bonheur was bereft. “You can very well
permit—from the police. Cross-dressing
understand how hard it is to be separated
(a.k.a. wearing pants) was illegal, so to
from a friend like my Nathalie, whom I
evade arrest, Bonheur needed the official
loved more and more as we advanced in
document. It allowed her to wear men’s
life,” she wrote to a friend. “She alone
clothing in public, with certain restrictions
knew me.”
against male attire at “spectacles, balls or other public meeting places.” The per-
According to art historian and biographer
mit was renewable every six months and
Dore Ashton, with Nathalie gone, Bonheur
required the signature of her doctor.
“found life almost unendurable.”
*****
*****
With money from The Horse Fair and other
Then Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Then
sales (Nathalie was an excellent business-
renewal. That fall of 1889 an American
woman), Bonheur, Nathalie, and Nathalie’s
artist studying in Paris came to the house
mother, Madame Micas, left Paris for the
at By to act as translator for John Arbuckle,
village of By, near the forest of Fontaine-
the New York coffee magnate who’d gifted
bleau, in 1860. There, they purchased a
the mustangs. Arbuckle wanted an excuse
château Bonheur christened the “Domain of
to meet the famous artist. Bonheur said a
Perfect Affection.” They lived surrounded
hasty thanks (before giving the horses to
by a vast menagerie that included monkeys,
Cody), then set about seducing the young
lions, horses, hounds, farm animals by the
translator, Anna Klumpke.
70
Born in San Francisco but trained as an
Two years after her death, a monumental
artist in France, Klumpke had been lame
bronze in memory of Rosa Bonheur was
in one leg since childhood. Her parents
dedicated on the Place Denecourt in the
figured she’d never marry. She also had
town of Fontainebleau. The Rosa Bonheur
a big enough nose that Bonheur gallantly
Monument did not depict the artist herself,
compared her to the great French lover of
but rather—in rare sympathy with an art-
the grand schnoz, Cyrano de Bergerac.
ist’s heart—featured a life-sized bronze bull, muscular and striding forward. A beautiful
Like Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother who
beast.
hung cutouts of English cathedrals above his cradle, Klumpke’s mother raised four daughters to excellent, varied careers by nurturing them since childhood. She’d given Anna a Rosa Bonheur doll to cherish as a girl, and later a print of The Horse Fair for inspiration. It worked. Anna studied painting at the renowned Académie Julian in Paris and won an honorable mention at the Salon of 1885 for a portrait of her sister. When Klumpke met Bonheur she was ready to adore the older woman, who adored her at first sight. Yes, it’s a little creepy, like Katie Holmes crushing on Tom Cruise in a Toledo movie theater as a girl and then growing up to marry him. But it’s also a little bit wonderful. For a gruff bear of a woman, Bonheur had the tenderest of hearts. “The thing is decided, right?” Bonheur wrote, once Klumpke had promised never to leave her. “This will be a divine marriage of two.” Bonheur died at the age of seventy-seven and was buried alongside Nathalie in Paris’s legendary Père Lachaise Cemetery. Forty- some years later, Anna Klumpke joined them there, forever.
71
CHAPTER 6:
EDMONIA LEWIS I thought of returning to wild life again; but my love of sculpture forbade it. —EDMONIA LEWIS
I N T H E L AT E 1980 S , independent scholar
Richardson pounced on the lead. She called.
and curator Marilyn Richardson was research-
And called. She left messages. They were not
ing the life of nineteenth-century sculptor
returned. So what would any academic on
Edmonia Lewis. Biographical evidence was
an independent scholar’s salary do? Damned
scarce, and Lewis’s most celebrated work,
straight—she got on a plane, then in a car, and
The Death of Cleopatra, (see page 74) had
then marched up Frank Orland’s front steps
been missing for a century. As one did in those
and rang his bell.
pre-Internet days, Richardson put out a call in
A now-pliant Orland led Richardson to a bar-
the New York Times Book Review asking for
ren corridor in a nearby suburban shopping
material of any kind.
mall. Hardly the place one might expect to find, say, a monumental marble statue of an
A curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Egyptian queen. Here’s where things in a
perhaps lingering over bagels and orange
detective caper might turn sinister—Don’t
juice some lazy Sunday, happened to see it
go in there, Marilyn!—but no, Frank was
and recalled a recentish letter from one Frank
okay. In a nondescript industrial hallway, he
Orland, a dentist/history buff from a Chicago
and Richardson stopped before a closed door.
suburb, who’d written to the Met looking for
Orland pulled out his keys.
information on the very same Edmonia; he thought he might have something of hers. The
A moment as iconic as Howard Carter and
museum curator, feeling generous, set down
George Herbert unsealing the ancient tomb
the juice and contacted the number listed in
of King Tut in the Valley of the Kings and
the Times.
striking a match. But this was way more
73
Edmonia Lewis. The Death of Cleopatra. 1876.
74
American: Orland leaned into the storage
Albany, of copper color, and with straight
room and flicked on the light.
black hair. There she made and sold moccasins. My father, who was a negro, and a
There sat Edmonia Lewis’s The Death of
gentleman’s servant, saw her and married
Cleopatra, a regal monarch limp on her
her. . . . Mother often left her home and
marble throne. Tragic, moving . . . and,
wandered with her people, whose habits she
noted Richardson, “surrounded by holiday
could not forget, and thus we her children
decorations and papier-mâché turkeys and
were brought up in the same wild manner.”
Christmas lights and Christmas elves.”
It goes without saying that being black and
Richardson was shaking.
Indian wouldn’t make Lewis’s future path any easier. And then she was orphaned.
A celebrated work by one of nineteenth- century America’s most important sculp-
Both parents had died by the time Lewis
tors, lost for a hundred years, was now
turned nine. She spent the rest of her child-
quite suddenly found.
hood with her mother’s people, who were Chippewa (Ojibwe), wearing moccasins and selling beads and other wares to
*****
tourists around Niagara Falls. Samuel, Why is an artist lost and then found? In the
her brother, was called Sunshine then and
case of Lewis, the reasons are almost too
she was Wildfire. Her Indian name suited
numerous. The low-hanging ones: she had
the headstrong girl.
no descendants, her Neoclassical style—so
At some juncture Samuel left for the gold
beloved in America of the 1860s to 1880s—
rush in California and Lewis began study-
fell out of favor. There was nothing to keep
ing at New York Central College, though
her in the news, no one to complain about
she was soon “declared to be wild” and
her lack of attention. For a century, no one
was asked to leave. With Samuel’s financial
knew what happened to her. Some said she
support and assistance from abolitionists,
died in Rome, some said Paris, some even
Lewis next enrolled at Oberlin College.
believed she died in Marin County, California, and was buried in San Francisco.
Oberlin was an abolitionist hotbed, the first
In fact, she died in 1907 of Bright’s disease
college in the United States to educate men
(painful), and was buried in London. Her
and women, whites and blacks. Together.
will identifies her as “spinster and sculptor.”
Lewis lived with the family of the Reverend
That leaves out a lot.
John Keep, where things were pleasantly
In an 1866 interview with a British critic,
unremarkable, until the winter of 1862:
Lewis described her origins this way: “My
Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 11, 1862.
mother was a wild Indian, and was born in
75
Mysterious Affair at Oberlin—Suspicion of
Lewis struck out for Boston in pursuit of
Foul Play—Two Young Ladies Poisoned—
art. There she met William Lloyd Garrison,
The Suspect under Arrest.
a hell-raising newspaperman, abolitionist, and suffragist. He introduced Lewis to
The poisoned were white girlfriends of
her future teacher, sculptor Edward A.
Lewis’s. Wine was involved, as was a sleigh
Brackett.
ride on a winter evening alone with male companions. The poison: Spanish fly. Lewis
Brackett specialized in busts of great men,
was accused of sneaking the dangerous
and Lewis, a quick study, started out the
aphrodisiac into the girls’ drinks.
same way. Her bust of Robert Gould Shaw, the fallen Boston Brahmin who led the first
It’s worth noting that the Civil War had
all-black regiment in the Civil War (i.e.,
begun the year before; even in idealistic
Matthew Broderick in Glory), sold over a
Oberlin times were tense. Before she could
hundred copies at $15 each. With the first
be officially charged, Lewis was abducted
real money she’d made from art, Lewis set
by vigilantes one evening as she left the
sail for Rome. “The land of liberty had no
Keep home, taken to a deserted field,
room for a colored sculptor,” she told the
stripped, beaten, and left for dead. She was
New York Times a dozen years later.
bedridden for days, and on crutches after.
I’ve always seen Lewis as an awesome
Not long after the beating, she was
inversion of Paul Gauguin, who late in the
arrested. Fortunately, her lawyer was John
same century left staid old Europe for
Mercer Langston, one of Oberlin’s first
uninhibited Tahiti. Lewis abandoned the
black graduates and later the first dean of
New World for the Old in 1866. The reversal
Howard University’s School of Law. A bril-
worked.
liant orator, Langston ended the trial with a six-hour closing argument. Lewis was
*****
acquitted of all charges. Can it be a coincidence that the first import-
It’s a testament to Lewis’s phenomenal grit
ant piece she completed as an expatriate
and ambition that she returned to Oberlin—
was called The Freedwoman on First Hear-
only to be accused the following year of
ing of Her Liberty?
stealing art supplies. Again acquitted, she was not allowed to re-enroll.
That work is now lost, but Lewis followed it with the celebrated and similarly themed
Not to be too Pollyannaish, but being forced
Forever Free, depicting a male and female
out of Oberlin was probably a blessing.
couple, slaves, at the moment of hearing news of the Emancipation Proclamation.
*****
The woman, barefoot and in a simple belted
76
tunic, kneels with clasped hands, gazing upward. Her long hair, parted in the center, falls softly to either side of her classically idealized face. The man standing beside her is nearly nude, wearing only loose-fitting shorts. His large right hand rests protectively on the woman’s shoulder. A chain hangs from his still manacled left wrist, but he raises that fist in triumph. His left foot rests atop the ball of his broken chain, where in a classical statue the head of a vanquished enemy might be (see Donatello’s David for a Renaissance take). Positioning one leg higher than the other causes Lewis’s contemporary figure to naturally stand in that most classical pose: contrapposto, a trick of the Greeks whereby having one active leg enlivens a standing figure (check out the Doryphoros by Polykleitos). Though Lewis celebrates a recent (for her) historical event in Forever Free, it is thoroughly grounded in tradition. This marriage of new and old is her genius. A clothed woman with an unclothed (or barely clothed) man can be seen as far back as ancient Egypt (Prince Rahotep and His Wife Nofret, for example). Or in the Kore and Kouros figures of Greece, where male Kouros are nude and female Kore wear belted peplos, tunics similar to the one worn
Edmonia Lewis. Forever Free (The Morning of Liberty). 1867.
by the kneeling woman in Forever Free (see the Peplos Kore from the Acropolis). Forever Free was as timely as America itself
sculptors Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Foley, and Emma Stebbins. (The internationally successful Hosmer helped Lewis secure the former studio of Italian Neoclassical master Antonio Canova.)
and as timeless as the classical world. Lewis found her own freedom in Rome, the eternal city, alongside a small group of fellow women expats. They included the
77
The equivalent boy clubs must have been
plastic material, was the pleading agent of
threatened; they let it fly.
her fame.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose wife Sophia
In truth, James had much in common with
was herself a painter, wrote a popular
Lewis (maybe his screed was self-abuse).
novel called The Marble Faun that treated
Both were Americans alone abroad. Both
women artists as mere copyists, doomed to
were unmarried and childless, very likely
tragedy. (Hawthorne had even less respect
gay. Both were dedicated to their arts. The
for women writers, telling his publisher,
difference was that while James might pass
“All women as authors are feeble and tire-
as straight, and Lewis might as well, she
some. I wish they were forbidden to write
couldn’t pass as white. For some reason
on pain of having their faces deeply scarified
James wanted to stab home that point, in
with an oyster shell.” To which, if I might
print.
interject, the only possible response is,
While we’re on the subject of color, I can’t
Screw you, Nate.)
go on without bringing up Lewis’s medium: white marble. Lewis worked in marble
But it was Henry James whose blow stuck.
because that’s what fine artists did. There’s no message in it and no “self-hating” aspect
In his biography of male expat sculptor William Wetmore Story, James describes
to it either (both have been proposed). News-
the women artists of Rome as “that strange
flash: Caucasians aren’t white like marble
sisterhood of American ‘lady sculptors’ who
either. That’s why in the ancient world,
at one time settled upon the seven hills in a
sculpture was always painted (Google
white marmorean flock.”
classical Greek art polychrome and prepare to freak out). Marble is an academic conceit
Marmorean being a fancy word for marble.
that telegraphs this is high art. It’s an Flock being a condescending way of saying
imaginary state that has nothing to do with
they were flighty, undifferentiated followers
specific skin color, whether people, horses,
of one another, a huddled horde shitting on
leather breastplates, or anything else.
great art. Birdbrains, maybe. *****
And just as once pejorative labels like Impressionist and Fauve would stick to
Italy appealed to sculptors because of its
later movements, “White Marmorean
abundance of marble and the great tradition
Flock” became shorthand for the women sculptors of mid-nineteenth-century Rome.
of its stonecutters. Sculptors generally
But James didn’t stop there. “One of the
turned over to a stonecutter who used
sisterhood . . . was a negress, whose colour,
pointing machines to accurately copy and
picturesquely contrasting with that of her
enlarge the model into a full-size version in
created a smaller-scale model that they
78
Edmonia Lewis. The Wooing of Hiawatha (Old Arrow-Maker and His Daughter). 1872.
79
stone. The nearly finished work was then returned to the sculptor, who added glossy final touches.
But Lewis could. The Wooing of Hiawatha is an exquisitely detailed scene of a moccasin-clad father crouched beside his daughter, both looking up mid-task. The man, again less clothed
This simple fact of sculpture making is as true today (Jeff Koons, anyone?) as it was in the nineteenth century. But critics of the Marmorean Flock used it to raise the ageless trope against women artists: they are not the authors of their own works. Marmorean Flock member Harriet Hosmer railed against such spiteful ignorance: “We women-artists have no objection to its being known that we employ assistants; we merely object to its being supposed that it is a system peculiar to ourselves.” Nearly all sculptors of the time used stonecutters and other artisans in executing their works.
than the woman, is chipping an arrowhead, while his daughter weaves a mat balanced across her knees. At their feet lies a small, dead deer. The artist’s mastery of stone is on full display here. From soft leather moccasins to the heavy skins the figures wear, from the hard flint held by the father to the soft mat in his daughter’s lap, there is a sensitive, tactile profusion of weights and surfaces. In addition to her mastery of material, The Wooing of Hiawatha is further remarkable for what it makes of its viewers. English speakers of her time would all have known Longfellow’s poem of a Chippewa brave who falls in love with a girl from the rival Dacotah tribe:
Except, not Lewis. She famously wielded the chisel herself. Early on she probably couldn’t afford assistants, but she no doubt continued because as a woman of color she could not afford any hint of fraud. *****
At the doorway of his wigwam Sat the ancient Arrow-maker, ...
This makes The Wooing of Hiawatha (also called Old Arrow-Maker and His Daughter) all the more remarkable.
At his side, in all her beauty, Sat the lovely Minnehaha, Sat his daughter, Laughing Water, Plaiting mats of flags and rushes ...
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha” was the most popular American poem of the nineteenth century. Many esteemed painters and sculptors created works inspired by it, but none of those artists was able to be inside and outside of a scene. That is, be artist and Indian, Western chronicler and Native knower.
At the feet of Laughing Water Hiawatha laid his burden
80
Hiawatha is nowhere in Lewis’s piece, but there is the deer lying before Minnehaha, and it’s us she looks up at. We are Hiawatha. Lewis has done away with the privileged white viewer, even while depicting the work of an august white poet. We are all Chippewa now. ***** I’m white, but two of my siblings are Native American. My sister Diane, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation, is eleven years older than me. A great boon to my childhood, since she could drive and, crucially, still liked going to fun places, such as Taco John’s and the YMCA. And every summer of my childhood she took me for long days at the Montana State Fair. One summer when I was about eight, our brother Tom won a blue ribbon for one of his paintings. His canvas of a man in a hospital bed was one of very few in the Fine Art Hall not on a “Western” theme (what art I Henry Rocher. Carte-de-Visite of Edmonia Lewis. c. 1870.
saw growing up mostly concerned horses, cowboys, Indians, bison, and the like). I held Diane’s hand as we walked along looking for Tom’s painting, silently bestowing titles
my sister, with high cheekbones and dark
on those we passed: Indian Girl with Doll.
braids falling over buckskin-covered breasts.
Cowboys Shooting Up Saloon. Braves
Her brown eyes stared back at Diane’s, but
Painted for War. Singing Cowboy on Horse-
they were vacant, like an Indian doll. Noth-
back. They all looked a little bit the same,
ing like my lively sister, whose favorite fair
like illustrations in books of fairy tales.
ride was the terrifying Zipper.
Nothing like Western life as I knew it.
The first time I saw Edmonia Lewis’s work,
Diane stopped walking. She was staring at
when I was an undergrad, I thought of that
a painting of a young Plains Indian woman,
long-ago day with Diane. I happened to
about her age. The woman was pretty, like
open a slim book on Neoclassical sculpture
81
So Cleopatra.
directly to a reproduction of The Wooing of Hiawatha. I’d never heard of Lewis, but
The public admired Lewis’s abolitionist
already liked what I saw. Her father and
works, and adored her Indian ones, but
daughter pair was idealized—a Neoclassical
perhaps her finest piece had nothing to do
tenet—but there was also something bright
with America, politically or historically.
and vibrant in them. Not other, but us. Like
Lewis spent more than four years crafting
people I knew. Like my own family.
her moving The Death of Cleopatra. Five
Lewis has sometimes been accused of milk-
feet high and weighing over two tons, it was
ing her heritage. But there’s no evidence of
her most ambitious undertaking.
that in her publicity material.
Cleopatra was a fraught subject. She was queen of Egypt from 51 b.c.e. until her
Her carte-de-visite photo, for example, is
death by suicide twenty-one years later.
a straightforward portrait of a thoughtful
No one knows her heritage. She was a
young woman. Carte-de-visites were calling
Greek Ptolemy on her father’s side, but her
cards, like a Twitter icon or Facebook page
mother may have been Egyptian, Nubian,
image today, conveying your best self—or
or Ethiopian. In other words, African. In
cleverest or happiest or whatever you
the nineteenth century, this possibility was
wanted most to suggest—out in front of the
hotly contested.
“real” you.
Cleopatra’s sexuality was also a hot topic.
As a successful artist, Lewis knew her
She was married to her younger brothers in
carte-de-visite was also a promotional
turn, both of whom she murdered. She was
tool. As such, she might have exploited
the mistress of Julius Caesar, followed by
her heritage with costumes, backdrops,
Marc Antony (she later married him, though
or props. Instead, she wears the plain,
he had a wife). In the nineteenth century
somewhat mannish clothes she was known
Cleopatra was variously seen as a great
for. Her face is thoughtful, her hands small
African queen and as a tramp who got what
but strong looking. Her famously “below
was coming to her.
average height,” is evident in her missing feet dangling somewhere inside her skirt
Antony and Cleopatra joined forces against
well above the floor.
Rome and lost. Antony fell on his sword, while Cleopatra died by deliberate snake-
She is diminutive, yes. But her work speaks
bite rather than be paraded through Rome
volumes.
in chains. Her own will be done. First shown at the Centennial Exposition of
*****
1876 in Philadelphia among some five hundred other sculptures, Lewis’s The Death of
82
Cleopatra was one of the sensations of the
Track in nearby Forest Park. Condon’s will required that the statue mark his horse’s grave forever.
day. In a startling innovation, her queen is not contemplating suicide, holding an asp seductively to her breast. No, Lewis’s queen
So there The Death of Cleopatra remained, even after the racetrack became a golf
is already dead, lips slightly parted with her last breath, left arm hanging limp. Hers is a
course, then a torpedo plant. But in the early 1970s the Postal Service built a new facility there and—so much for covenants—Cleopatra was shuttled off to the contractor’s outdoor storage yard in a nearby town, marble amid the backhoes. There it was discovered by sympathetic Boy Scouts who cleaned and painted it, well-intended but not strictly recommended conservation practices. Finally, the statue was brought to the attention of the Historical Society of Forest Park and they acquired it in 1985, tucking it away in the mall for safekeeping.
poignant portrait of the queen of Egypt not as seductress, but as a monarch as great and tragic as Lear. By capturing the moment of death, Lewis’s sculpture was sometimes considered horrible, even ugly, but her Cleopatra was written about and widely admired. An African American weekly of the time reported that “The Death of Cleopatra excites more admiration and gathers larger crowds around it than any other work of art in the vast collection of Memorial Hall.” Mainstream histories have called it “the
It was as head of the society that Frank Orland stood in the dim doorway of a holiday storage space in a suburban shopping mall as scholar Marilyn Richardson stepped inside.
most remarkable piece of sculpture in the American section.” Cleopatra went next for exhibition to Chicago in 1878, where it again drew crowds. Lauded, argued over, widely seen, nevertheless, Cleopatra did not sell. Too expensive to ship back to Rome and no doubt hoping a buyer would come along, Lewis put Cleopatra into storage in the town where it was last shown. Somehow, by 1892 it was on display in a Chicago saloon. Later it became the property of a notorious local gambler, “Blind John” Condon, who may have won it in a bet. He used Lewis’s masterwork as the grave marker for his favorite horse, also named Cleopatra. The horse was buried in front of the grandstand of the Harlem Race
83
CHAPTER 7:
PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures come alive in the light. Sometimes I feel it is myself that kicks inside me, myself I must give suck to, love . . . —A D R I E N N E R I C H, “PAU L A B EC K E R TO C L A R A W E S T H O F F”
I T I S A T R U T H universally acknowledged
Edvard Munch called, “the soul’s inner
that the annus mirabilis of twentieth-
pictures.”
century Modernism occurred, quite specif-
So what happened in 1907 that branded it
ically, in 1907 in the city of Paris, making
ground zero of twentieth-century Modernism?
way for everything that was to follow.
One of the oldest things in art: the female
Every movement loves a start date. But,
nude. As painted by two men.
of course, Modernism was well underway before 1907. The Romantics had already
In the spring of 1907, former Fauve bad boy
depicted a world devoid of organized religion,
Henri Matisse showed his Blue Nude (Sou-
but soulful and sublime; Realists had given
venir de Biskra), an unclothed woman in the
us the heroism of everyday life (“How great
odalisque tradition (reclining, Orientalizing,
and poetic we are in our cravats and our
sexualized) reduced to disjointed color, line,
patent-leather boots,” said Baudelaire); the
and form.
Impressionists faithfully captured on canvas the play of light across skin, field, water, and
As if summoned to a duel, Picasso answered
air; and Post-Impressionists took such facts
by painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,
to the unseen world of spirit and emotion,
a shocking and disorienting brothel scene
what Symbolist (and proto-Expressionist)
credited with ushering in Cubism. “The
85
contest for the supremacy of the avant-
stares out at us, comfortable and impassive.
garde was being fought in the arena of the
From the waist up she wears only an amber
female nude, painted large in scale,” writes
necklace that rests between her small
Cubism scholar Natasha Staller. Contest is
breasts. Her left hand holds a kind of skirt
certainly le mot juste in this case.
or drapery around her waist, while her right rests—protectively? meaningfully?—above
Yet that contest was underway before 1907.
her protruding belly.
The previous year, a nude as groundbreaking as those by Matisse and Picasso had
It’s painting as manifesto, not one brush-
already been painted, by a woman. In Paula
stroke less so than Picasso’s Les Dem-
Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait, Age 30,
oiselles d’Avignon. In a New Yorker
6th Wedding Day, the unclothed subject
interview, art historian Diane Radycki
is the artist herself. Standing life-size, she
describes Modersohn-Becker as “the missing piece in the history of twentieth-century Modernism.” “Cézanne is the father of us all,” is a line attributed both to Picasso and to Matisse. Certainly it’s true he fathered them both. It’s equally true that Modersohn-Becker is mother to an alternative strand of Modernism: psychologically probing, personally brave, flagrantly and unrepentantly female. Think Frida Kahlo and Alice Neel, Ana Mendieta, Kiki Smith, Nancy Spero, Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie, and countless more. The list is eminent and long.
***** I like to picture Modersohn-Becker in a cold Parisian flat, in the spring of 1906. She’s waited until the light is good, but sun in May is weak at best. She’s stripped to the waist, chilled, and alone but for her camera.
Paula Modersohn-Becker. Self-Portrait, Age 30, 6th Wedding Day. 1906.
She’s left her husband, her parents, and her
86
sisters behind in Germany. She is there, in a
When she’s done, she steps back. She knows
foreign city, because she has no choice. This
she’s becoming something at last. Never
is where she first saw Cézanne, Gauguin.
again will she apologize when saying she is
Where the ancient art of the Louvre—
a painter.
Egyptian, Etruscan, Roman—waits for
She signs this self-portrait P. B. Though
her every day. The Old Masters are there,
she notes the day as her fifth anniversary
too, of course. And in the galleries, so much
(or sixth wedding day) of marriage to Otto
that’s new. Something entirely fresh is hap-
Modersohn, that’s done now. She uses only
pening in art; she must be part of it.
the initials of her maiden name: Paula Becker. I made this.
She’s painted nudes for years, German peasants, even old women and young girls,
A friend from home, the poet Rainer Maria
from the village of Worpswede. Here in
Rilke, stops by soon after, catching sight of
Paris, it’s not so easy. Models are a profes-
the new work. He eyes his friend’s swollen
sional lot. They must be paid—in francs, not
belly on canvas with concern. Rilke believes
in trade or promises—and, just now, she has
art must trump life. A child would be a
no money.
disaster.
But what luck, she has herself with her. She
He should relax. Paula Becker is not
smiles and adjusts the light, the lens, and
pregnant.
steps back. She varies the tilt of her head, takes one photo with hands to necklace,
*****
another with them resting across the flat plane of her stomach. She plucks small flow-
Modersohn-Becker painted the first female
ers from a jar on her bedside table, the first
nude self-portrait in Western history. It is
buds of spring, and holds them before her as
true that Artemisia Gentileschi likely used
she stares into the camera.
her own body as the model for her Old Testament heroine in Susanna and the
She develops the film, likes what she sees.
Elders, but that’s not the same thing. In Self-Portrait, Age 30, Modersohn-Becker
As soon as she wakes each morning, she
is her own heroine. She is artist, subject,
paints. Paints all day while the light lasts.
object, metaphor, nature, and actor.
She forgets to eat. The work is enough; it sustains her. Though she grows thinner, in
Compare the not-pregnant, but pregnant-
paint she grows fuller. She gives herself a
looking artist, here, to her flourishing
wholesome round belly, big with promise.
forebearers in paint: Botticelli’s famous
She is as full of potential as a bud in spring.
curving Venus in La Primavera, for
87
example. The goddess is not with child,
translated letters and journals on the “class
but is part of a (nearly) baffling allegory
hold” shelf in the library. At the break, I
pertaining to the fertility of all creation. Or
raced upstairs, found the book, and moved
consider the female half of The Arnolfini
it to “my” chair in a study room. Books on
Wedding Portrait by Jan van Eyck. On
class hold could not be checked out.
seeing it (if you have not, trust me), the
I spent the next week at my boyfriend’s
inevitable first question is, “Why is the
place on the Upper East Side so I could get
bride pregnant?” She’s not. Round-bellied women, believe it or not, were considered
to school early and get dibs on the book.
the most beautiful.
Mornings I waited on the cold sidewalk for the building to open, vainly warming my
Though revolutionary, Modersohn-Becker is
palms on cardboard to-go cups of too-milky
more than aware of the past. She is Botti-
tea. Once in my chair upstairs, I devoured
celli and his Venus, Jan and his full-bellied
Modersohn-Becker’s words, wanting to
bride, in a cold Parisian garret in spring,
know, in order to re-create, her recipe for
procreative as all hell.
making oneself an artist.
By the time Modersohn-Becker painted *****
her first nude self-portrait at the age of thirty (she went on to do six more), she’d been grappling seriously with art for a good
It was her diaries and letters, not her paint-
decade, ambitious from the start.
ings, that first made Modersohn-Becker famous. Rilke, her close friend, refused to
When I was twenty-two, I read this, written
act as editor and begged his own publisher
by the artist in 1897 when she was my
not to release them: “For where do they let
same age: “I walk along the boulevards and
us learn that this accommodating creature,
crowds of people pass by and something
who met the demands of family communi-
inside me cries out, ‘The beauty I have
cation so compliantly and cooperatively,
before me, none, none, none of you have.’”
would, later, seized by the passion of her
By the time I read those words, I was in
task, renouncing all else, shoulder loneliness
love with New York and in love with the
and poverty?”
idea of writing, though I’d done little outside the academic.
Where else but in the paintings themselves?
In a course on German Expressionism, our
Though the writings don’t always pertain
professor, Gert Schiff, had shown one of
directly to her art, I’m so glad they were
Modersohn-Becker’s nude self-portraits
revealed. They give us the backstory, and
and mentioned he’d put a volume of her
all the conflicted emotion behind that story.
88
Paula Modersohn-Becker. Portrait of Clara Rilke-Westhoff. 1905.
89
Modersohn-Becker’s father (named—
rose was Rilke’s flower, used often in his
unfortunate in our Harry Potter age—
poems. His wife looks out of the picture to
Woldemar) had insisted she train as a
her left, her face a mask of forbearance and
governess. There’d be no hinging hopes on
longing.
marriage, much less the utter fantasy of art. But his driven daughter snuck in art train-
The painting illustrates how crucial ancient
ing when and where she could. She never
art was to Modersohn-Becker’s burgeoning
had her father’s blessing (“I don’t believe
late style. Her figures are simplified, monu-
you will be a divinely inspired artist of the
mental, and timeless. But they also demon-
first rank—it would have shown in you well
strate her grasp of Modernism’s penetrating
before this”), but then neither did Cézanne.
psychology, its flatness and powerful form married to mysterious symbol.
On her own, Modersohn-Becker discovered the artists’ colony of Worpswede near her
Becker often used flowers in her portraits
hometown. It had been founded in 1889
of women, archetypes of nature, of beauty,
by two art students, Fritz Mackensen and
of femininity, but also mysterious in the
Otto Modersohn, as part of an embrace of a
way they are often held up for the viewer, a
naturalist movement romantically fixated
secret sign we sort of understand, the way
on nature and the ennobling qualities of
we comprehend things in dreams.
shoveling ox dung and burning peat. *****
It was in Mackensen’s drawing class for his female students that Paula Becker met the
Modersohn-Becker’s visits to Paris began on
sculptor Clara Westhoff in 1899. The young
January 1, 1900. In the first six months, she
artists became intimate friends, working together, dreaming, talking, planning. They
wrote effusive letters back to Worpswede,
were soon joined by the poet Rilke, who
entreating others to come experience the
seemed a little in love with them both (“I
transformative new art there. Several
am with you. Am gratefully with you both, /
Worpswede artists came, including Otto
Who are as sisters to my soul.”). But it was
Modersohn, eleven years her senior and
Clara he married.
one of the colony’s founders. His sick wife, left abed at home, died three days after he
In Modersohn-Becker’s Portrait of Clara
arrived. Three months later, he and Paula
Rilke-Westhoff, painted in 1905, just a year
Becker were engaged.
before her flight to Paris and breakthrough self-portrait, she depicts her friend all in
Otto Modersohn is sometimes painted as
white, a dramatic contrast to her dark hair
the bad guy in the story of his artist wife,
and the red rose she holds to her chest. The
but he loved and admired her. She had a
90
Paula Modersohn-Becker. Reclining Mother and Child II. 1906.
studio outside their home in Worpswede (as
Rilke-Westhoff herself later wrote, “Paula
did he), painting from nine in the morning
threw one piece of peat on the other
until seven at night, with a two-hour break
through a little squeaking door in the kiln,
midday for family lunch, prepared by a cook.
as one tear after another rolled down her
She had more support than most women
cheek while she explained to me how very
artists, of any era. But even with that and
important it was for her to be out ‘in the
with yearly visits to Paris, she struggled.
world’ again, to go back to Paris again.
A rural art colony, Worpswede looked
“‘When I think of it, the world’—she said.”
backward while Modersohn-Becker saw the future. “She is understood by no one,” wrote
In early 1906, just days after Otto’s birth-
her husband, who tried to understand.
day, Modersohn-Becker fled Worpswede, intending never to return.
While working on her Portrait of Clara Rilke-Westhoff, Modersohn-Becker wrote
*****
her mother, “That one is so terribly stuck when one is married is rather hard.”
91
In letters from Paris she begged Otto not to
what it’s made for. Her monumental mother
try to win her back. At the same time, she
reclines with breasts, navel, and pubic hair
asked for money. As a married woman, she
exposed. Her hairstyle and features are
had none of her own.
undifferentiated, masklike, in imitation of ancient or non-Western sources. She is as
Practical necessities were a constant prob-
timeless as the Venus of Willendorf, which
lem—food, heat, model’s fees—but still, her
is about how far you have to go back—the
art flourished. After only a few months in
Paleolithic—to find a frank and frankly
Paris, she broke through to a powerful new
unsexy pubic view.
style. Shortly after painting the life-size Reclining Mother and Child II she wrote
In addition, the artist has entirely reimag-
her sister Milly, ecstatically, “I am becoming
ined the nursing mother and child. Not as
something—I am living the most intensely
Virgin suckling a holy (male) child, or as
happy period of my life.” Then she asked
earthy peasant wearily opening her blouse,
Milly to send money.
but as Woman, Mother, Nude offering suste-
Traditionally, a reclining nude is a come-
nance and love, and getting those in return
hither sign of sexual availability, whether
from a child whose sex we do not know.
cloaked in mythology (Titian’s Venus of
Modersohn-Becker’s nude mothers are pow-
Urbino, say) or Orientalizing romanticism
erful and protean, also natural. As artists
(Ingres’s Grande Odalisque) or straight-up
are. As this artist and woman is.
prostitution (Manet’s Olympia). In these and hundreds (thousands?) of similar works,
Critics have sometimes sensed a conserva-
a nude woman stares undefended at the
tive streak in Modersohn-Becker’s mother
viewer, welcoming his gaze. It is impossible
and child paintings, an obsession with
to presume the viewer is anything but a
womanhood’s being bound up in mother-
man; it is presumed for us.
hood. But Modersohn-Becker’s vision has a feminist core. She wants it all: art and child.
But in her Reclining Mother and Child, Modersohn-Becker broke with three
We don’t know whether the artist was
thousand years of convention. Her mother
pregnant when she made Reclining Mother
and child face each other, oblivious to any
and Child II, but she likely was. If not quite
viewer. They do offer sensuality, but it’s one
yet, then soon.
of food and touch and warmth and animal love. For each other.
*****
Equally groundbreaking, ModersohnBecker does not fear a woman’s body or
92
I remember the very moment I saw Modersohn-Becker’s work for the first time, sitting near the front of the Institute’s lecture space, in the mansion’s former ballroom. Professor Schiff was a few feet away, peering into his notes at the lectern. He’d fought on the German side in World War II, was captured by the French, and then came to New York, where he lived among the bohemians at the Hotel Chelsea. A few years ago I read this by Patti Smith in her memoir Just Kids, from when she lived there: “Occasionally I would bump into Gert Schiff, the German scholar, armed with volumes on Picasso.” I smiled, picturing Schiff just as he was at the lectern twenty years Paula Modersohn-Becker. Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace II. 1906.
later, hunched over a text on art, rumpled, wry, impassioned. A slide of Modersohn-Becker’s Self-Portrait
“They are,” Schiff said beside her, “nearly
with Amber Necklace popped up, many feet
the same color and shape as her areolas.”
high beside him, the crystal chandeliers and
His German accent slipped softly on the s’s.
mirrored gilt walls of the room disappearing behind a woman’s pale torso. Schiff glanced
It looks so clinical written down, but
up, looked startled, then gave a sigh—of
sounded beautiful to me then. Unlike every
what? Recognition? Admiration? I followed
other nude we’d seen in the course, she
his gaze. An ample nude seen from the waist
was sensual but not sexual, brimming with
up, body turned toward us, her eyes cast
health and strength. So unlike her Nordic
somewhere to our right. She stands before
and Germanic peers, slashing, sultry nudes
a sky-blue background filled with vines and
as she-wolves and sex objects, devourers
flowers. She wears an amber necklace—
and meat.
warm gold against peach skin—and in her pulled-back hair are three small pink flow-
I was stunned by the painting, trying to
ers. She holds two similar flowers against
take notes, but not wanting to look away.
her chest, the one in her left hand turned
When Schiff said it was a self-portrait, I
upward between her breasts.
almost dropped my pen. When he said that
93
here, this artist was pregnant, I did. Some-
Otto Modersohn showed up in Paris unan-
how, I hadn’t known such a thing was pos-
nounced, just a week after his estranged
sible. I didn’t know you could have a child
wife had completed her Self-Portrait, Age
and make great art, I really didn’t. Maybe
30, 6th Wedding Day, signed with just the
not entirely a surprise that I didn’t know.
initials of her maiden name. She was paint-
Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace is the
ing Rilke’s portrait—another model she didn’t have to pay for, like herself—when
first pregnant nude self-portrait in history.
Otto burst in.
Years later, when I was teaching a yearlong
In the beginning she resisted his entreaties,
Survey of Modern Art course at Portland
but then, finally, she took him back. Who
State, I lingered on Self-Portrait with
knows why? Money? Loneliness? Love
Amber Necklace with my students, in a
for him?
lecture hall ten times the size of the old mansion ballroom where I’d first encoun-
They lived together in Paris through the
tered it. Like Schiff, I pointed out the small
summer before moving back to Worpswede.
flowers and the artist’s nipples and how she
Modersohn-Becker had by then created a
was, like nature, lovely, generative, eternal.
handful of revolutionary nudes, including
I mentioned the child inside her, and the
her two self-portraits and the monumental Reclining Mother and Child. And she was
work without. I glowed at the lectern with
well along in her first pregnancy.
admiration for such a woman.
Before leaving France that fall, she could
When grading finals, where the painting
have seen exhibitions by Rousseau, who
had been one of the slide IDs, more than
was her neighbor, as well as Courbet,
one student parroted back what I’d said
Cézanne, Gauguin, Rodin, Derain, and
about it, then added comments about the
Matisse. She might have seen the latter’s
nipples and flowers like, “Which is weird,”
incendiary Blue Nude just as she was
or “I still don’t get why anyone would do
packing up her own revolutionary nudes for
that,” or “Maybe being pregnant made her
her return to a small German art colony still
act strange.” I went back and made a small
fixated on the previous century. But she was
stack of the exams with such comments.
untroubled, certain of her breakthrough.
They were all male.
She did write a chilling letter to her sister Milly in November: “I look at it this way: if the good Lord allows me to create
*****
94
something beautiful once more, I’ll be happy and content just as long as I have a place where I can work in peace, and I will be thankful for what part of love comes my way. As long as one stays healthy, and doesn’t die young.” Possibly no surprise that a woman coming near to giving birth in that era might think of death. ***** Later that same month, Modersohn-Becker gave birth to a daughter, Mathilde. Photographs show a beaming mother and screaming baby, both healthy and thriving. The mother and artist kept telling visitors: “You should see her in the nude!” As was common practice, the new mother was put on two weeks of complete bed rest. After one week, she complained of leg pains. After two, she was allowed up. She braided her hair, weaving roses in it, and asked for her daughter. Suddenly she was in pain. She raised one leg, then collapsed. Her last words: What a pity.
95
CHAPTER 8:
VANESSA BELL Charles Tansley used to say that, she remembered, women can’t paint, can’t write. —VIRGINIA WOOLF, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
Indeed, I am amazed, a little alarmed (for as you have the children, the fame by rights belongs to me) by your combination of pure artistic vision and brilliance of imagination. —VIRGINIA WOOLF IN A LETTER TO HER SISTER
I N S O M E E A R LY I S H M O N T H O F 191 2,
writing. Women, the painting declares,
two sisters—Vanessa Bell (née Stephen)
at work.
and Virginia Stephen (soon to be Woolf )—
Painting, writing, crocheting. Women’s
worked together quietly indoors. It’s
work, all of it.
convenient to imagine a fire roaring nearby. England in late winter or early spring calls
Seen another way: one of the twentieth
to mind chill, dampness, probable rain. Yes,
century’s greatest writers, famous for
there must have been a fire.
brilliantly distilling into print transcendent moments of everyday life, sits almost
The younger, Virginia (yes, that Virginia
as symbol of routine existence, captured
Woolf), knit or crocheted while listing left
on canvas by a Modernist virtuoso whose
in an enveloping orange armchair. Vanessa,
paintings of daily life pushed a self-satisfied
older by just two and a half years, propped
British public to acknowledge a powerful
her modest canvas nearby and captured
new visual language (one it had tried to
something there of her sister’s writerly
ignore as a brute French aberration).
focus, her weaving together of threads to create pattern, beauty, something use-
Sisters with sister messages, in complemen-
ful and of value. Crochet as corollary to
tary mediums. Ding.
97
captures something essential in her, a pose or way of being in the world as distinctive as her facial features. Virginia Woolf was noted among friends and family for the rapid mobility of her facial expressions— impossible to capture in paint or by camera— and also her violent dislike of posing for portraits of any kind. Bell understood her, body and soul. She ignored mere features, capturing her sister’s essence instead. “It’s more like Virginia in its way than anything else of her,” Leonard Woolf told a critic decades after his wife’s death (speaking of another faceless portrait of his wife by his sister-in-law, done that same year). The sisters traded muse roles regularly. Vanessa Bell. Virginia Woolf. 1912.
At the time of her portrait, here, Woolf was at work on her first novel, then called
Bell’s portrait of Woolf reveals the explosive
Melymbrosia, later published as The Voyage
impact on her art of Britain’s first Post-
Out. Bell served as model for one of the nov-
Impressionist exhibition, organized two
el’s main characters, Helen Ambrose. Bell
years before by her lover, Roger Fry, with
would later loom large in Woolf’s master-
the help of her husband, Clive Bell (hold on
piece, To the Lighthouse (#2 in a BBC top 25
to your hat, that brain-twister and more to
greatest British novels ever poll), where a
come). Experiencing Cézanne, Gauguin, van
painter, Lily Briscoe, is the soul of the story.
Gogh, pierced the young painter: “Here was
Later still, Bell was Susan in Woolf’s most
a possible path,” Bell wrote of seeing their
experimental work, The Waves (#16 in the
work, “a sudden liberation and encourage-
BBC top 25).
ment to feel for oneself.”
But were they alike? In ambition, yes, but
The heavy black outline of forms in her
not much else.
portrait of Woolf, the loose, visible brushstrokes and the bright contrasts of orange
Bell was stolid, self-contained, an almost
armchair and teal background all reveal the
totemic figure of self-possession, who, while
influence of Post-Impressionism. But one
socially unconventional, was, according to
thing in particular is Bell’s own. She depicts
biographer Frances Spalding, “voraciously
her sister, a person as close to her as anyone
maternal.” Virginia, on the other hand,
in the world, without a face. Instead, Bell
was brilliant but brittle, childless, and
98
emotionally fragile. One lived a long life, the
suddenly, was Woolf’s own talented sister.
other cut hers short. One is little known, the
The one who survived. The sister who
other revered.
painted. My first thought was: how sad. What fate
*****
could be worse than to be in close proximity to genius, capable of recognizing it,
Throughout my twenties Virginia Woolf was
but, alas, something less-than? And Woolf’s
my literary idol due to her many thrilling
sister Vanessa Bell must have been less-
attributes: sublime, groundbreaking fiction;
than, because I’d barely heard of her. How
crystalline, biting nonfiction; artistic cour-
terrible, and sadly typical, that in my long
age; fearless childlessness; madness, which I
pursuit of women artists I’d apparently
believed connoted genius.
learned nothing. Least of all, that they are all too easily lost to time, a condition rarely
For my thirtieth birthday my husband gave
any reflection on their talent.
me Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary, purchased at the legendary City Lights bookstore.
A few weeks after inhaling A Writer’s
We had just moved to San Francisco, and
Diary—the boxes of books by now
beyond some freelance work, I had no real
unpacked and installed on IKEA book-
job yet, so I lay across a stained rose carpet
shelves in the back of the apartment—I
surrounded by unopened boxes in a dilapi-
discovered, quite unexpectedly, that I was
dated Victorian on Oak Street and read the
pregnant. I grabbed Woolf’s diary off the
diaries straight through, gulping entries
shelf, turned to the index, then reread every
like oxygen.
entry on Vanessa Bell, mother of three, who never stopped painting.
It was not until then, somehow, that I realized Virginia Woolf had a sister who
*****
painted. (In my feeble defense, my education as a Modernist was almost totally French- and German-centric, with a dash of
Such creativity was a kind of birthright.
Norwegian Edvard Munch thrown in.) As
Her father was eminent critic and historian
one of nine children, I’m cozier than most
Sir Leslie Stephen, whose first wife was
with the sharp elbows of sibling rivalry, and
the daughter of novelist William Make-
I’d long been fascinated that Virginia Woolf
peace Thackeray. Meanwhile, Vanessa and
had seven siblings (two boys and two girls
Virginia’s own mother, Julia, was niece
were half-siblings), but never looked deeper.
and subject of photography pioneer Julia
Now on that rose carpet, in that drafty Vic-
Margaret Cameron and also the model
torian, I thought of Woolf’s famous account
for some Pre-Raphaelite painters, whose
of Shakespeare’s thwarted and undeveloped
strong-boned, wavy-haired heroines she
sister in A Room of One’s Own. And here,
epitomized. Bell’s childhood was surrounded
99
by artists, writers, and thinkers on all sides,
At the death of her beloved brother,
though from earlier generations. “The cruel
Vanessa married his friend Clive Bell. They
thing,” wrote her sister, “was that while we
had two children, Julian and Quentin. At
could see the future, we were completely in
age twenty-nine, Julian was killed while
the power of the past.”
serving as an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War. Bell almost did not survive his
Widowers with children from previous
death. When four years later her sister put
marriages, Leslie and Julia had four
stones in her pockets and waded into the
together: Thoby, Vanessa, Virginia, and
river Ouse, Bell more than understood the
Adrian. At the death of Leslie Stephen in
stoicism required of wrenching loss.
1904 (Julia had died in 1895), the siblings stayed together. They set up house in an
But Bell’s long and productive life was far
unfashionable London neighborhood called
from tragic. Her passions were deeply felt
Bloomsbury, where Thoby’s Cambridge
and abundant. Foremost were her children and her art, and maybe also love itself.
friends joined them in creating a lively gathering of influential artists, writers, and
A multiplicity of love was helped along
intellectuals who ultimately transformed
by husband Clive Bell, who insisted on an
British art and life.
open marriage. To his credit, this openness was not for himself alone and extended to
The tomes written on the Bloomsbury
his wife, who soon took up with England’s
Group—the name given their artful London
preeminent art historian, Roger Fry. Unlike
clique—may outweigh that of any other
Clive, her lover was devastated when after
twentieth-century phenomenon, save World
a few years she fell for painter Duncan
War II. To keep this account pithy and keep
Grant, then lived with him in marriagelike
it to Bell, I’ll start with a quick chronology
coupledom for some forty years. Together
of Bell’s life, which reads as a litany of loss:
they had a child, Angelica, who was raised
The month Bell turned sixteen, her mother
as a Bell. Vanessa and Clive never divorced
died of rheumatic fever (in our brief history
and remained congenial friends. Meanwhile,
of women artists, dead mothers are a
Vanessa quietly shared her love of Grant
terrible, recurring theme). Two years later,
with a series of his gay lovers (including
the death of her half-sister, Stella, forced
writer Bunny Garnett, who many years
Bell into the role of “woman of the house.”
later—yikes—married Angelica).
Between balancing the household budget and serving tea at 4:30, she squeezed in art
Vanessa Bell pursued art alongside what-
classes at the Royal Academy. The death
ever life threw at her. In 1912—her break-
of Sir Leslie liberated her, but the sibling
through year—she had two children under
paradise of Bloomsbury did not last. Two
age four, a wandering husband who still
years later, the eldest, Thoby, succumbed to
expected laundered shirts and family meals,
typhoid.
a married lover, a huge cast of friends and
100
relations who regularly dropped by for teas, dinners, and long evening visits, and a brilliant younger sister of fragile emotional health (Woolf had by now experienced at least two serious breakdowns). Through all of it, Bell painted. “I don’t think I’m nearly as enterprising as you (or Duncan),” she once wrote Fry, “about painting anything I don’t find at my door.” Reading about Bell in her sister’s diaries, this is the talent I recognized I would most need as a mother: Bell simply got to work, with whatever was at hand.
Vanessa Bell. Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting. 1912.
Such as her sister in a nearby armchair. Or houseguests.
Bell’s painting offers more than a mere
To whit, Frederick and Jessie Etchells, a
formal exercise. It’s moving to see sibling
brother and sister duo of painters who were
artists working together (not so different
Bell’s first guests at her new country home
from Bell painting her writer sister), but
in late summer 1912. That Bell both hosted
she includes a whiff of the injustice she
them (along with Frederick’s annoying dog)
must have sometimes known even in bohe-
and painted alongside them is testament to
mian Bloomsbury. While Frederick (who
her work ethic.
Vanessa didn’t much like) works standing at an easel (Was it Bell’s easel? Did she have
On a formal level, Bell is assured here. Dark
an extra? Did he bring one with him on the
sinewy outlines—what Fry (a biased art
train?), his sister crouches on the floor. Her
historian, perhaps, but a sharp one) called
brother was unrepentant even decades
her “slithery handwriting”—demarcate
later, when he told the Tate, “It is startling
figures and shapes while the rest of the
to come across so authentic a representation
canvas pops with bold rectangles of color.
of oneself at a so much younger period, and
As with Picasso, who was never wholly non-
Jessie is equally true to one’s recollection.”
representational, these abstract passages
He must have seen his sister working on the
refer to something concrete in the world. In
floor a lot.
this case, the canvases the siblings work on and those stacked against the wall behind
*****
Jessie. Equally rectilinear are horizontal slices of clear color denoting the garden view between open French doors: stone steps,
Bell’s masterwork of this early period is the
red tile courtyard, green lawn, gray wall.
spare and haunting Studland Beach, called
101
Vanessa Bell. Studland Beach. 1911.
“one of the most radical works of the time
the beach with a young child, watching the
in England” by art historian Richard Shone.
figures above: the standing woman with a
The painting’s power lies as much in Bell’s
single thick braid down her back, who has
own past as in the Modernist future she
children at her feet hunched over hunting
helped create.
or building in the sand while she stares out at a horizonless sea. The figure calls to mind
A diagonal shoreline divides the scene
predecessors as wide-ranging as Piero della
between water and sand, with figures above
Francesca’s quattrocento altarpiece of the
and below. In the upper right, a woman seen
Madonna della Misericordia, to modern
from behind stands before a white cabana
visions of Munch and Matisse.
as if entering a portal to another world. Maybe the very one revealed here: simpli-
Bell’s women and children by the sea pre-
fied, timeless, eternal, filled with children,
dicts, maybe even partly inspired, Virginia
anchored by women. The woman in a hat
Woolf’s literary masterpiece To the Light-
sitting in the lower left may be a nanny, but
house. The novel grapples with the sisters’
might also be Virginia Woolf. She rests on
real childhood experience seaside with
102
multiple siblings, an overbearing father, and a warm, capable mother who dies too soon. The Stephen family spent summers in St. Ives looking onto Godrevy Lighthouse, a singular verticality on the horizontal plane of the sea. One of the novel’s main characters, Lily Briscoe, is a painter who suffers outward criticism and inward uncertainty, but who in the end prevails. Hers are the novel’s final words: “With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush, I have had my vision.” The magic of both Studland Beach and To the Lighthouse is the prosaic transformed into the highest art, so high as to be almost a spiritual experience. Studland Beach could be an altarpiece for a modern era— Mother and Child meet women and children.
Vanessa Bell. Cover of First Edition of ‘The Waves’ by Virginia Woolf. 1931.
Everyday life becomes eternal. *****
play-poem . . . a mystical eyeless book.” It was, like her sister’s paintings, faceless,
Bell did the covers for her sister’s books. Her abstracted, almost ecstatic lines denoting lighthouse, waves, or whatever was within (the covers are also charmingly literal) became the hallmark style of the Hogarth Press (a hand press and a publishing imprint that Virginia and her husband started in 1917).
abstracted, but always drawing on the vital
And Bell continued to inspire her sister’s art. As noted, Susan in The Waves is based on Bell, while the work as a whole seems influenced by her paintings. Woolf wrote in her diaries that The Waves was “an abstract
novel, The Voyage Out, an old man declares,
stuff of life itself. A decade after writing The Waves, Woolf deliberately drowned. Bell suffered at her loss, but went on. Into old age, painting until the very end. A survivor, she might have been her sister’s hero. Near the end of Woolf’s first “It’s not cowardly to wish to live. It’s the very reverse of cowardly. Personally, I’d like to go on for a hundred years . . . Think of all the things that are bound to happen!”
103
CHAPTER 9:
ALICE NEEL Alice loved a wretch. She loved the wretch in the hero and the hero in the wretch. She saw that in all of us, I think. —GINNY NEEL
The self, we have it like an albatross around the neck. —ALICE NEEL
I N T H E W I N T E R O F 1 93 1 , a thirty-year-
by long days in barred rooms where she was
old painter named Alice Neel was strapped
ever watched by some figure of authority.
with restraints to a thin mattress in
Quite literally maddening for any artist,
Philadelphia’s orthopedic hospital. Institu-
whose job it is to be observer, not observed.
tionalized by her parents, Neel was raving,
But Neel needed watching. Released from
incontinent, and suicidal. She would become,
the hospital, she strode into her parents’
arguably, the greatest American portrait-
kitchen her first night home and stuck
ist of the twentieth century, but was now
her head in their oven. Her brother found
forbidden by doctors to draw or make art
her there not quite dead in the morning
of any kind. Art, the medical establishment
(first thinking it was his mother’s legs
believed, was too unsettling for a lovely
flung across the linoleum). While her father
young blonde like Alice Neel. She was
complained about the coming gas bill, Neel
instructed to sew instead.
was bundled back to the suicide ward. There
Neel hated sewing.
she tried swallowing shards of broken glass,
She was kept to a strict institutional schedule
then auto-asphyxiation by stocking. Nothing
like a prisoner: awakened for 5 a.m. break-
worked. “I couldn’t pull long enough or hard
fast, to be eaten with a rubber fork, followed
enough,” she said. “You cannot commit
then throwing herself down a laundry chute,
105
suicide unless you—in a moment of frenzy—
surrender to aging and the decline of the
you do something irrevocable.”
flesh. But what about the fact that after five decades of dedicated portraiture, this was
She never did, at least not in the sense of
Neel’s first real self-portrait? That after
suicide. Neel’s irrevocable act was to paint
cajoling dozens of sitters—men, women,
and never stop.
and children—to doff their duds, she at last joins them. She has surrendered to her own
It was as a grad student in New York that I
inspection at long last, there on the same
first saw one of Neel’s paintings, a portrait
blue-striped loveseat upon which so many
of Andy Warhol. Immediately I adored
others sat for her. Here, finally, Neel sits for
her. Portraiture is, I confess, my favorite
herself.
art form, and Neel was an alchemist of the soul. She portrayed things somehow only
She’s a tough customer. Modersohn-Becker
she could see: the psychology and spirit, the
pioneered the nude self-portrait—a brave
vital essence, of her sitters.
and revolutionary act—but it was as a
I kept looking from Warhol on the wall to
woman in bloom, of youth and artistic vigor
the nearly empty gallery, hoping to catch
and motherhood, adhering to more conven-
someone’s eye and ask, Are you seeing what
tional standards of beauty. Neel has nothing
I’m seeing? Neel had captured something
left to own with pride. Her body is a fallen
no other painting or photo or album cover of
landscape of battles gone by, her broad,
the infamous Pop artist had come close to.
distended belly rests across flaccid thighs
Andy Warhol, a pale and vulnerable man in
while large, fleshy breasts dangle almost as
all his fragile humanity.
low. Neel gave birth to four children, and it shows.
Remarkably, she was just as good when turning that all-seeing eye on herself. She
Her cheeks are ruddy to almost red, from
lived long enough to capture one of the most
age or New York weather or a lifetime
knowing takes on aging ever made, up there
of hard living, while between those same
with Rembrandt in its cold-eyed view of the
cheeks, above and below downturned lips,
sagging self. Eighty years old in this paint-
her skin is ghastly green. That green patch
ing, made in 1980, the master portraitist
is instantly familiar, maybe even a quota-
has turned her unsparing scrutiny upon her
tion, from Matisse’s famous portrait of his
own still-formidable self. Her fluffy white
wife from 1905, The Green Stripe. Neel
grandma updo—incongruous on a nude, to
shares Amélie Matisse’s upswept hair, arch-
say the least—rhymes with the bright white
ing eyebrows, pursed lips, and a trio of solid
rag dangling from her left hand. Meant for
colors arrayed behind her. It’s as if Neel
dabbing paint, according to some commen-
is hooting at her Fauvist friend from the
tators, the rag is also a flag of surrender.
other end of the century, shouting, “Screw
But surrender to what? I expect they mean
abstraction, Hank, we won after all!”
106
If this painting waves any flag it’s that of
certain revolt against everything decent.”
portraiture still alive and kicking even after
No one ever revolted more consistently
the artists and critics and art historians who
than Alice Neel.
“mattered” all believed it stone cold and long buried.
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Neel’s high-flown brows are familiar to anyone who’s ever peered into a mirror putting
While there’s often some charming mystery
on mascara, an indication of careful atten-
to writing about artists of the past, holes in
tion. Neel must have done this painting
knowledge we can (however unconsciously)
by looking in a mirror. For one thing, she disliked working from photographs, desiring the pulse of personhood and emotion beneath real flesh. But also, here she holds her paintbrush in the right hand and Neel was left-handed. She wears glasses in a nod to old age and honest scrutiny and even waning sexual allure. To quote her contemporary, Dorothy Parker: “Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses.” Or to quote feminist art historian (and Neel subject) Linda Nochlin, eyeglasses “are hardly part of the traditional apparatus of the nude.” Neel is being both scrupulous and poking a little fun: Here ya go, male gaze, enjoy. Unlike Rembrandt’s weary personal testaments to the ravages of time, there’s no sense that Neel feels sorry for herself. What many might consider a ruin of a body is just realism at work, a fact like any other. Though painted in an age when finding something that might still épater le bourgeois was almost impossible, a naked old woman was pretty damned shocking. “Frightful, isn’t it?” Neel cackled to critic Ted Castle. “I love it. At least it shows a
Alice Neel. Self-Portrait. 1980.
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fill with our own hopes or ideals, when writ-
How she ended up in a suicide ward and
ing about artists close to us in time, there’s
how she got out and how she found success
the problem of knowing too much: every
at last all had the same source: “I was neu-
cough and letter, every lover and seaside
rotic. Art saved me.”
sojourn and trip to the corner store. What,
Neel made it out after convincing a social
then, with a life like Alice Neel’s, which
worker she was “a famous artist,” then
spanned eight decades, one husband, three
met a Spanish Civil War fighter and heroin
fathers of four children, who knows how
addict named Kenneth Doolittle and moved
many lovers and significant friends? There
into his place in Greenwich Village; two
is nothing to do but spin the reel on high
years later he burned more than three
speed and hold on tight:
hundred of her watercolors and slashed
Raised in working-class Pennsylvania, Neel
over fifty oils; Neel moved in briefly with
put herself through art school; graduated
well-off Harvard grad John Rothschild (her
1925, married a Cuban painter named
lifelong friend and probable lover), before
Carlos Enríquez that same year; moved to
hooking up with a Puerto Rican nightclub
Havana, where she was embraced by the
singer named Jose Negron; they had a baby
Cuban avant-garde, got politically radical-
boy called Richard and when he was three
ized, had her first show and her first baby,
months old, Negron abandoned them both
a girl named Santillana; 1927 relocated to
in Spanish Harlem; two years later Neel
New York City, where Santillana died of
had another son, Hartley, with left-wing
diphtheria just before her first birthday;
filmmaker Sam Brody.
the following year had a second daughter, Isabetta, whom Carlos took to meet his
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parents, then abandoned in Havana while he went on to Paris so that Neel lost two
Significantly, both Neel’s sons carry her
children in less than two years, as well as a
last name. Through everything, she painted
husband.
and parented and did what she had to do to survive.
“At first all I did was paint, day and night,” Neel said. She worked in a manic state for
Neel was resourceful, whether it meant
months until collapsing with what she called
working as an easel painter for the WPA,
“Freud’s classic hysteria,” but might also be
shoplifting, or scaring up welfare, food
called guilt: “You see, I had always had this
stamps, or full scholarships for her sons.
awful dichotomy. I loved Isabetta, of course
The Rudolf Steiner School is right next door
I did. But I wanted to paint.” The firestorm
to the Institute of Fine Arts. I used to pass
of sorrow, giddiness, and shame finally
the Steiner kids on the sidewalk and wonder
engulfed her.
how those little bohemians found their way
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to the Upper East Side. But then, how did I? Later, I sent both my children to the same kind of school in San Francisco and taught art history to high school students there for years. Art in Steiner schools is the linchpin of the curriculum, whether the class is English, history, math, or physics. In a sense, Neel sent her kids to her own version of parochial school, one that held art as the holy of holies. Neel was adept at getting what she wanted, but it took a couple of decades of painting friends and neighbors in Spanish Harlem before she realized a little networking wouldn’t kill her. With a nudge from her therapist, Neel starting asking art world folks in power to take a seat. Shades of shrewd Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. Neel started in 1960 with poet and newly appointed Museum of Modern Art curator Frank O’Hara. As an art-maker himself and a gay man, maybe he seemed nearer Neel’s regular milieu of outcasts. But Neel depicts O’Hara in perfect profile, a rare formal position for her (though he wears a rumpled gray crewneck) that calls to mind Roman emperors on coins or Renaissance
Alice Neel. Frank O’Hara. 1960.
profile portraits. Quite specifically, O’Hara here recalls Piero della Francesca’s Duke
O’Hara leans back into a spray of purple
of Urbino, who could be looking right back
lilacs. O’Hara’s open, staring eyes are as
at the MOMA curator across five centuries. Painting O’Hara in profile emphasizes his
startlingly blue as a movie star’s (Paul
“strong” nose and jutting chin, as does della
Newman’s spring to mind; O’Hara liked a
Francesca’s Urbino portrait. Both are men
good movie-star reference), while behind
of power, though where the Duke of Urbi-
him hangs a formless shadow, a kind of dark
no’s structured red cap is almost crownlike,
double portrait. That shadow looms large
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Alice Neel. Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd. 1970. 110
for us, knowing that just four years later
gay, and others, such as critics (and couple)
O’Hara would be dead at age forty, struck
David Bourdon and Gregory Battcock and
by a jeep on the beach at Fire Island.
that saintly (as in Saint Sebastian, or some other tortured soul) portrait of Pop artist
Maybe Neel intuited O’Hara’s dark near-
Andy Warhol, pale and shirtless in a corset,
future, or maybe she was anticipating
both from 1970.
her own. What worked for Labille-Guiard flopped for Neel. Though O’Hara showed
But I think her best painting of that year
and reviewed many figurative artists in the
is the dual portrait of gay couple Jackie
next few years, he never included Neel in
Curtis and Ritta Redd. Though Jackie is in
any exhibition, and he never wrote about
drag on the right (and listed first in the title,
her work.
which is as disorienting as their presentation and gender-neutral first names), Ritta,
Same thing with Henry Geldzahler, curator
on the left, dressed in a boyish striped shirt
of twentieth-century art at the Metropol-
and jeans, is the softer, more “feminine” of
itan Museum of Art, whose portrait Neel
the two.
painted in 1967. But when she asked him to include her in a career-making show—New
Both were part of Warhol’s Factory and
York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970—
Curtis was a glam “Warhol superstar,” but
two years later, Geldzahler sneered, “Oh, so
neither had any power in the art world,
you want to be a professional.” He did not
or the wider world, for that matter. Neel
include Neel in the exhibition.
just wanted to paint them. Curtis is done up with blue eye shadow, red nail polish, a smart ’50s-era skirt-and-blouse ensemble,
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and dark stockings (with a small hole where his right, polished big toe pokes through),
The slings and arrows of Neel’s professional
but this is no Diane Arbus freak show. The
life were legion. She might have become bit-
men are as dignified as any Neel sitters, and
ter, but mostly she just kept working. And
clearly lovers. Curtis’s right knee juts at an
yet. “I’m not against abstraction,” she said.
awkward angle toward us so that his lower
“What I can’t stand is that the abstraction-
leg presses against Redd’s. It’s a tender
ists pushed all the other pushcarts off the
gesture of togetherness. There is a whiff of
street.” Still, she stuck to her guns, which
poignancy, even longing, in Neel’s depiction
meant the figurative in all forms.
of their shared affection. It’s especially
According to curator Jeremy Lewison,
lovely considering homosexuality was not
“Many of her best portraits of the period
just an outlaw “lifestyle” then, but quite
were of gay men and gay couples.” Neel
literally illegal. Being gay meant being
painted O’Hara and Geldzahler, men who
seen as at best immoral and quite likely
might have helped her who happened to be
insane (homosexuality was on the American
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The rise of feminism was at last the perfect storm to raise Neel’s battered boat. Here after all was a woman artist, in the thick of the New York art world for decades, who had been callously overlooked. She’d always been egalitarian in her approach to her subjects: working-class men and women of all races, mothers of all kinds, fine artists of every sex and race, pregnant women, curators and art historians, nudes of all ages, gay men and transvestites, the glory of humanity at every point on the way station of the century, and through it all she’d stuck to her own style, never swayed by theory or fashion. Feminists in the 1970s took up Neel’s cause with vigor, though Neel refused to spout a party line. “I much preferred men to women,” she shrugged. Her contemporaries rightly scoffed at Neel’s feminist branding. Painter May Stevens
Alice Neel. Kate Millett. 1970.
has said, “She wasn’t a feminist; she was an Alice Neelist.”
Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders until 1973).
Regardless, the movement served Neel
Not that Neel gave a shit about any of it,
to create their cover on Kate Millett, the
not morality or social opprobrium or even
Columbia grad student whose disserta-
legality. Her sons remember FBI agents
tion, published as Sexual Politics, was an
descending on the apartment at the height
unlikely bestseller. Last of a dying breed,
of the Red Scare with a thick dossier on
Neel of course wanted to paint from the
Neel’s communist sympathies. Rather than
living model, but Millett refused. Like a
quake or cajole, Neel admired “these two
lead singer worried about pissing off her
well. In 1970, TIME magazine asked her
bandmates, she didn’t want to break ranks
Irish boys” and immediately invited them to
with the sisterhood by taking the limelight.
sit for her “in their trench coats.” The FBI
Never one to pass up on opportunity, Neel
men declined and quickly exited. Posterity
settled for a photograph.
weeps at the loss.
By painting the cover for TIME, Neel reached a bigger audience than any
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112
contemporary artist could ever dream of, and the portrait of Millett is one of her best-known works. It is, unabashedly, icon-making. Staring, unsmiling, mannish and intense, with her dark hair and white men’s shirt, Millett reminds me most of Robert Mapplethorpe’s famous cover image of Patti Smith on the album Horses a few years later. Both are working-class hotties in crisp white shirts, conveying seriousness of purpose alongside a sexy androgynous glamor. Quite a feat. Perhaps Mapplethorpe had taken note. Mapplethorpe photographed Neel herself not long before she died of cancer in 1984. It’s a haunting picture, deliberately so. Neel knew she was dying and told Mapple thorpe she wanted to know what she’d look like dead. So she closed her eyes and opened her mouth, in imitation of innumerable n ineteenth-century photographs of the recently deceased. The result is transcendent, like Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa, a moment of piercing rapture and possible pain. Neel depicted the human in all of us, including herself, the deformed, deranged, beautiful wretches that we are. “I tried to reflect innocently,” Neel once said of her work. She was wickedly good at it.
113
CHAPTER 10:
LEE KRASNER I sacrificed nothing. —LEE KRASNER
I N A P H O T O G R A P H F R O M the summer
Russian-Jewish parents were reunited after
of 1927 two sisters pose shoulder to shoul-
two years apart. Ruth came two years after
der on a sandy beach in their bathing suits.
her. Two American girls in a traditional
Nineteen-year-old Lenore stares evenly at
Jewish family that spoke Russian and Yid-
the camera, while Ruth, seventeen, smiles
dish at home, Lena and Ruth were almost a
but glances away. They look like any Ameri-
family unto themselves. They shared a bed
can teenagers, but are not quite.
growing up and shared the dislocation of being raised in two worlds: Old and New.
By now Lenore (a name she’d given herself) was going by “Lee” with her art school
By the time her picture was taken on the
crowd in Manhattan, where she attended
beach, the girl now called Lee Krasner fully
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of
intended to plant her flag firmly in the New.
Science and Art. She’d understood her own destiny for years: “I don’t know where the
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word A-R-T came from; but by the time I was thirteen, I knew I wanted to be a
The following summer, in July 1928, Kras-
painter.” Not exactly a predictable choice
ner’s older sister Rose died of appendici-
for the Brooklyn-bred daughter of an immi-
tis, leaving behind two young daughters.
grant fishmonger.
According to Old World tradition, Krasner
She’d been born Lena Krassner, the sixth
should now marry her brother-in-law and
of her mother’s seven children and the first
raise her nieces. This was not a request, but
born in America, just nine months after her
an outright expectation.
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Krasner’s application to life drawing was this assured self-portrait, done outside her parents’ home in rural Long Island, where they had moved (and she with them) in 1926. “I nailed a mirror to a tree, and spent the summer painting myself with trees showing in the background,” Krasner said. “It was difficult—the light in the mirror, the heat and the bugs.” It was both technically challenging and a bold choice for a school steeped in nineteenth-century Academic (read: highly traditional) painting. Krasner depicts herself as a no-nonsense young woman in a dirty painter’s apron and short-sleeved work shirt with short hair to match. Her cool-eyed stare is familiar from
Lee Krasner. Self-Portrait. 1930.
the beach photo, but here she casts a cold eye on herself. Piercing and a little merci-
She refused.
less, she doesn’t flatter herself physically: her lips, nose, and ears are big, her eyes
Ruth, just eighteen years old and perhaps
small. But in one way she does flatter: she
more pliant, or with less grasp of her own
wholly and self-consciously presents herself
destiny, stepped or was pushed into the
as a painter. This is me.
breach. According to Krasner biographer Gail Levin, Ruth “never forgave her sister.”
The painting got her into life drawing class (enticingly called “Life in Full”) at the
But crucially, and quickly, Krasner forgave
Academy, where she would be allowed to
herself.
draw from the nude model, but not without
The September after Rose’s death, Krasner
a scolding from her teachers, who said,
applied to the National Academy of Design,
“When you paint a picture inside, don’t pre-
on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and was
tend it’s done outside.” They thought she’d
accepted. Like most serious art schools,
made up the trees for some reason, while
students there began by sketching from
keeping strictly to nature when it came to
casts of Classical and Renaissance sculp-
the awkward planes of her own face.
tures before they could enter “life drawing” *****
classes, to which they had to apply.
116
That Krasner was not conventionally attrac-
a kind of revelation to me at age nineteen
tive is often remarked on. Her biographer,
that a man might want a woman for reasons
Levin, who knew Krasner, writes, “I never
other than looks (the opposite was all too
considered Lee ugly, as several of her con-
obvious). For the right kind of man—even
temporaries and some writers have empha-
in this case, a volatile genius—attraction
sized since her death.” But Levin does go
might lie in talent, passion, brains, and
on at length about Krasner’s great figure,
commitment.
even quoting a fellow female student at the
There were bands I loved then with women
Academy describing “the extremely ugly,
in them, but no matter how punk rock, the
elegantly stylized Lee Krasner. She had a
women seemed up for display in a way their
huge nose, pendulous lips, bleached hair in
male counterparts didn’t. Krasner—who
a long, slick bob, and a dazzlingly beautiful,
was once tickled when a critic called her
luminously white body.”
use of color “punk rock”—confirmed what
Ever notice how no one ever talks about
I should already have known: looks don’t
how Picasso wasn’t good-looking? He
mean shit; it’s all about the licks.
wasn’t. And he was short (5 ft 4 in/162 cm).
If you know anything about Lee Krasner,
Why does this never enter into accounts of
you know she was married to Jackson
his life and work? Because it doesn’t matter.
Pollock, martyred saint of America’s first home-grown church of Modernism, the cult
Right?
of Abstract Expressionism. Ab Ex (as it’s And never, that I can recall, has anyone
affectionately known) was the sublime com-
begun a discussion of Jackson Pollock’s
ing together of cultivated European philos-
work with a phrase such as, “The bald but
ophy and brute “can-do” American action.
still virile painter . . .”
Ab Ex as perfected by Pollock was all about doing. According to influential critic
The first time I saw a picture of Krasner
Harold Rosenberg, “At a certain moment
I was an undergraduate and she was my
the canvas began to appear to one American
research paper subject. The photo showed
painter after another as an arena in which
her glancing up at Pollock with him looking
to act. What was to go on the canvas was
back at her, a scraggly bunch of daisies held
not a picture but an event.”
between them. They’re a matched set those three, rough but serviceable. She is not hot;
Ab Ex canvases were gestural and sprawl-
neither is he; the daisies are just okay. Awe-
ing—slashes or spills of paint all over the
some. I liked Krasner even more now that
canvas—and tended to the large (read:
I’d caught sight of her, and liked Pollock,
heroic). For the Abstract Expressionist, the
too, for liking her. It was, I’m sorry to say,
canvas was a rectangle of cultivated battle,
117
no less than the boxing ring or wrestling
was Krasner who got there first. She beat
mat. It tended to attract men. Or actually,
Pollock in the first round.
no. It tended to recognize men, those brawling, “heroic” action figures.
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But this is not about Jackson Pollock.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This is about Lee Krasner, married to him for eleven years, but a painter for three
Krasner left the Academy in 1932 with a
decades after he died and painting for
handsome White Russian émigré boyfriend
nearly twenty years before they met. If
named Igor Pantuhoff and a desire to pur-
one of the great aims of Modernism was to
sue the new. One Academy instructor, Leon
“make it new” (to quote Ezra Pound, who
Kroll, had once told her to “go home and
was, somewhat confoundingly, quoting an
take a mental bath.” Instead, she took off
eighteenth-century Chinese king), then it
and immersed herself in the avant-garde. She and Pantuhoff moved in together (they never married, possibly because Pantuhoff’s anti-Semitic Russian family were the very sort whose pogroms caused Krasner’s family to flee the Old Country in the first place). Together they frequented an eatery called the Jumble Shop, a gathering place for serious artists from Arshile Gorky to Willem de Kooning, where “you didn’t get a seat at the table unless you thought Picasso was a god,” according to Krasner. Like de Kooning and Gorky—and like Picasso himself—Krasner had not yet taken up total abstraction. But as her Seated Nude demonstrates, she was working through the complex lessons of Cubism under the tutelage of German painter Hans Hofmann, a legendary teacher who taught a “push pull” aesthetic of puncturing the two-dimensional picture plane and reordering it using the tension of relationships between simplified
Lee Krasner. Seated Nude. 1940.
118
parts (color, form) rather than “illustrating”
the birth of abstraction—why it came into
a given scene.
being—is as far from mean-spirited as possible. In fact, it was all about spirit. A new
Eh?
spiritual imagination for a new age.
If that sounds like nonsense, maybe
After so many revolutionary nineteenth-
Hofmann’s words are clearer: “The ability
century developments—railroads, photog-
to simplify means to eliminate the unnec-
raphy, Darwinism, feminism—how could
essary so that the necessary may speak.”
traditional Western art, whether a nude
After three years of taking classes with
Greek god or a savior on a cross, express
Hofmann, uncovering the simple and the
the modern spiritual condition? Impres-
necessary, Krasner broke through—she
sionism tackled the problem by being
called it a “physical break in my work”—to
a-spiritual, concerning itself solely with the
abstraction.
material world. Post-Impressionists sought some symbolic meaning within the world itself (think of van Gogh’s sunflowers or his
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roiling night sky). By the early twentieth Speaking of nonsense, it is, alas, a word
century artists wanted to go even further,
sometimes (often?) associated with abstract
looking for ways to lift the veil of the known
artworks, and it occurs to me that we
world and peek at what lies beyond.
should tackle the elephant (or non-objective
Abstract art is sometimes described as a
rectangle) in the room straight off. There is,
departure from reality, but a better way
no question, a pervasive sense that abstract
to say it might be that it seeks to express
art is some trick played on a gullible public,
a different reality. The reality behind our
that artists and critics are laughing behind
visible world. Whether we’re woo-woo
their silk hankies at the fools they’ve duped
wingnuts or utter rationalists, I think we
into taking this crap seriously. But you’ll
can all agree such reality exists. Music, for
have to take my word for it: artists, critics,
example.
art historians, and gallery owners are all quite earnest in their regard for abstract
You wouldn’t think of a jazz musician as
art. I promise.
a fraud trying to trick you into thinking noise was really music. No, because you
Still, even fairly highbrow pundits (e.g., Tom
feel music intuitively: your soul and spirit
Wolfe in The Painted Word) have contended
(and even body) understand its message.
that abstraction is nothing less than charla-
The same is true of abstract art if you give
tanism, practiced by lazy, greedy artists and
it time and attention. It will work on you,
a complicit art world on a naive public. Yet
if it’s good. And of course there’s also no
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accounting for taste. You might far pre-
clubbing with her hero Piet Mondrian—“We
fer John Coltrane to John Cage. You may
were both mad for jazz”—who, along with
prefer some abstract paintings to others—I
so many other eminent European artists,
have strong opinions I won’t bore you with
had fled Hitler for New York.
here—but you can still know that those
Pollock’s work showed Krasner a totally
paintings were made with earnest goodwill
new way to approach abstraction: not
and hope for conveying some true meaning.
formally from without as with European Modernism, but from within. In turn, she
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gave him support and connections. After Krasner discovered Pollock (yep, I mean it
But I digress.
like that), she introduced him, and his work, to prominent artists and critics, such as
In November 1941, influential Ukrainian
Clement Greenberg, who more than anyone
artist and impresario John Graham
christened Pollock the savior of American
(emphatically not his given name) invited
painting.
Krasner to take part in a group show with big names like Matisse, Braque, Picasso,
She also brought Hofmann to meet Pollock.
and some painter she didn’t know, named
Hofmann’s classes always used a model:
Pollock. When they met soon after, she
witness Krasner’s Seated Nude, a sketch
recognized him as a guy she’d danced with
done from life. He considered nature the
at an Artists Union party back in 1926.
source, an artistic imperative even for
Legend has it (legendarily suppressed by
pure abstraction. The eminent instructor
Krasner) that Pollock asked her back then,
looked around Pollock’s studio and, seeing
“Do you like to fuck?” If she hadn’t been
no evidence of models, neither still lifes nor
charmed by him in ’26, she was now bowled
extant sketches, asked skeptically, “Do you
over by seeing his work, a feeling she later
work from nature?”
described as “wild enthusiasm.” They were Pollock’s reply speaks volumes: “I am
soon a couple.
nature.” Conveniently, by the time Krasner met With that, the wheel turned.
Pollock, her White Russian had wandered away to Florida, where he left any lingering Modernist tendencies behind, becoming a
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society portraitist and faithful escort to rich Southern ladies. For her part, Krasner was
In 1945 the two painters were married.
working in the WPA’s mural division (she
With financial assistance from Peggy
later became Pollock’s boss for a while) and
Guggenheim—who liked Pollock as much
120
as she loathed Krasner, even though he was the one peeing in her fireplace at parties— they purchased a home in the Springs on Long Island. There, in a big barn that Pollock used as his studio, he developed his revolutionary drip paintings, the brilliant epitome of gesture, action, and abstraction in one mind-blowing explosion of beautifully ordered paint and canvas. In a small upstairs bedroom of the main house that Krasner used as her studio, she too worked from within. Just, you know, a lot smaller. Like Pollock, she took to standing over her canvas rather than working on an easel, and dripping paint. But where he lunged and danced like a fencer parrying with an opponent, she worked with “controlled chaos.” ComposiLee Krasner. Composition. 1949.
tion is one of thirty-one paintings that make up her Little Image series (1946–1950), done in the bedroom at Springs. Here
language she studied as a child. Certainly,
Krasner layers in thick surfaces of paint,
in the painful years following World War II,
divvying up the canvas with an all-over
Judaism must have often been in her mind,
grid of white skeins that create dozens
and heart.
(hundreds?) of smaller images, like hiero-
Ah, Krasner’s heart.
glyphics in an Egyptian tomb. Like Egyptian hieroglyphics, there’s a tantalizing
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sense that if we only had the right key, we might unlock this mysterious language. At the same time, there’s something universal
She knew life with Pollock would be tumul-
in their form, something we intuitively
tuous. Early in their courtship, she’d gone
recognize as meaningful and human and
with his brother to get him out of Bellevue,
timeless. Many commentators have con-
where he’d been drying out for days after
nected Krasner’s Little Image paintings
a bender brought on by his mother coming
to the Kabbalah of Jewish mysticism, and
to town. Pollock was an alcoholic, no doubt,
more prosaically, simply to the Hebrew
and an angry, violent drunk at that. It was a
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before and after his death, but she never stopped making art. Never. As artists they stood shoulder to shoulder, doing the work. Unlike the movie version of Salieri, Krasner did not want this Mozart dead. She very much wanted him to paint, and to live, on. Famously, Pollock did neither. The final year of his life, Pollock painted not at all, though Krasner tried to keep him working and sober. She got a reputation for bitchiness, which may have been deserved. But then, she had some things to feel bitchy about. Her own work was not one of them. By the time Pollock died in an alcohol-fueled car crash (one young woman died with him; his mistress lived) in the summer of 1956, Krasner had completed a series of impres-
Lee Krasner. Milkweed. 1955.
sive collages made by tearing up old paintings she found insufficient and reassembling
lot, but Krasner was willing to take on all of
the shards on canvas. As in Milkweed here,
it for the sake of art, and love.
the results revealed a beautiful balancing point somewhere between Matisse and
Critic Amei Wallach has said of Pollock and
Motherwell, embracing the past and pres-
Krasner that “his energy was lyric, hers was
ent, hers and the whole history of Modern
thundering. He was Mozart to her Wagner.”
art. Krasner had found her own way, work-
I smiled when first reading this because
ing from without and within. Her work had
I’ve often thought of Krasner as Salieri to
never been better.
Pollock’s Mozart (in the pop-culture sense, i.e., the movie). Not that Krasner was dan-
Krasner named the collage paintings after
gerously envious or conniving, but because
they were made, coming up with titles by
like Salieri she was an excellent artist, close
association. So Milkweed isn’t a “picture”
enough to genius to know it immediately
of the plant per se, but a feeling or spirit or
when she saw it. Much has been made of
color or shape linked with it, at least in her
Krasner’s tireless promotion of Pollock, both
mind. As to what Milkweed or any other
122
Krasner artwork means, she said, “I think my painting is autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.” It strikes me that the collages are Krasner’s most obviously autobiographical work. What is autobiography if not selecting chunks of the past and artfully reorienting them in the present? Krasner of course meant more than this mechanical act. She meant that her work as a whole, which continued long past the Little Image series and collages and well into the next three decades, expanding in size, color, and motion, was ripe with her joys and sorrows. Krasner was a restless, protean painter, changing and growing until the end. She did not have children; she did not remarry. She painted. Art itself was her whole life. Sixteen years after Krasner’s death, Marcia Gay Harden won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for depicting her in the biopic Pollock (2000). I’d known about the movie for years, even before it was made. Susan Emshwiller, daughter of my wonderful first writing mentor, Carol Emshwiller, wrote the screenplay. It’s a great film. But the irony of Best Supporting Actress is too much. If you want to know Krasner, look to her art.
123
CHAPTER 11:
LOUISE BOURGEOIS In my art I am the murderer. —LOUISE BOURGEOIS
Art is a guaranty of sanity. —LOUISE BOURGEOIS
S O M E T I M E S YO U D O J U D G E a book
This was the first time I encountered a
by its cover. We’ve all experienced the siren
Femme Maison, part of a series of draw-
song of a compelling picture stirring some
ings and paintings done in the late 1940s by
covetous need (The Goldfinch, anyone?).
French-American artist Louise Bourgeois,
Back in the days before Amazon or Google,
wherein the heads of nude female figures are covered by—or have perhaps transmog-
you could know almost nothing about a book
rified into—houses. I’ve seen many exam-
(or album!), and still want it simply because
ples since, but the Lippard cover is still my
of a captivating image.
favorite.
That’s how on a late afternoon on the Lower
In stark black and white, it depicts a nude
East Side in the early ’90s I happened to
with curving thighs and hips, but with
leave Saint Mark’s Bookshop with a copy
everything from her navel up contained
of Lucy Lippard’s From the Center zipped
in a boxy rectilinear house (though two
inside my leather jacket. I wasn’t stealing;
U-shapes that imply breasts show through
it was raining. I was protecting the cover,
the first floor). It’s a heavy load. This is no
the reason I’d needed to own that book.
suburban-picket-fence-type house, this is a
125
frickin’ château, with a big central staircase and two stories of Roman arches like a mini coliseum. The figure’s left hand hangs loose at her side, while the other—or so I first thought—cheerfully waves. She seemed to be waving at me. Flagging me down? Later I thought the gesture might read differently, something like, Hey you! Can you get this house off me? The wall above her limp left hand is suspiciously coffin-shaped. This was how I discovered Louise Bourgeois, a mother and an artist then around eighty years old, living just blocks west of where I’d first found her, and still furiously producing great work. Femme Maison is literally “woman house,” but it really means “housewife.” Bourgeois was a housewife when she made them, and a pretty good one. Might we imagine that they are self-portraits of a kind? Bourgeois said that a Femme Maison “does not know that she is half naked, and she does not know that she is trying to hide. That is to say, she is totally self-defeating because she shows herself at the very moment that she thinks she is hiding.” I hadn’t known anything about the artist then, but her Femme Maison contained everything I—a young woman starting out in life—feared (or secretly hoped for?) about
Louise Bourgeois. Femme Maison. 1984.
womanhood. That a home would consume
Version 2 of 2, only state, variant. 1984. Photogravure with Chine-collé, plate: 101/16 x 47/16 inches; sheet: 195/16 x 1415/16 inches. The Museum of Modern Art. © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, NY.
me, destroy a vital part of my personality and intelligence, i.e., my head. But also, Hey man, that is one big-ass house. Maybe I could have a house like that?
126
Ah, the conflicting desires of young woman-
But Louise Bourgeois, she remembered
hood.
everything. A handy trait in an artist, as her work amply reveals. Because that
I carried Lippard’s book safely through a
work—and it is a massive oeuvre spanning
light rain, to the apartment I shared with
some seven decades, multiple media, and
my friend and fellow grad student, Martha,
almost zero culling—relates in some way to
who was smart as shit, with a low voice, dry
her own biography, an overview of her life is
laugh, and a wit to match. I was still close
practically a requirement.
enough to high school to hope her brains and savoir faire might sluff off on me by
Bourgeois was born in Paris on Christmas
proximity, though the chasm between us felt
Day, 1911. “I was a pain in the ass when I
unbridgeable. I had dyed black hair straight
was born,” she said, noting the unpleasant
out of the Ramones; Martha was ringed in
interruption in holiday Champagne and
God-given blonde curls like a Raphael angel.
oyster service, not to mention the doctor’s
She was from academic-sounding Andover
extreme inconvenience. If her work—and
and her father worked at Harvard. I was
words—are to be believed, that prick of
from Montana and the California coast, my
perceived nuisance pierced her childhood.
father a grocery store attorney. She was
Especially where her father was concerned.
a Medievalist; I was a Modernist. But we were both interested in feminist art history
She’d been named after him (Louis Bour-
(the subtitle of Lippard’s book was, in fact,
geois), partly because he wanted a boy.
Feminist Essays on Women and Art). I
Her father was not above sadistic teasing
researched women artists, while Martha’s
for what she lacked in that regard (Google
scholarship was far more searching. While
Louise Bourgeois-peels tangerine for a
I wrote about Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, she
gutting spectacle of how childhood pain
wrote about Christ’s wounds as vaginal
can linger even into glorious old age). The
images and the like. But we were both, if I
accusation of penis envy by her father—
may flatter myself, hell-raisers of our kind.
involving said tangerine and a table knife—
She was my sister in art and crime.
seems tailor-made for Surrealist purposes. It’s no wonder Bourgeois grew up to create
I partly bought the Lippard book thinking
haunting tableaux with titles like The
we’d both read it. I can’t remember if I ever
Destruction of the Father.
loaned it to Martha, and don’t know where it is now, cannot find it among my many book-
She waited out World War I—her father
shelves and boxes. The memory of it simply
was away fighting—with her mother’s
ends with its acquisition.
family, who ran a business locating and repairing old tapestries, massive textiles with intricate weaving and complex scenes
*****
127
with elaborate borders and backgrounds.
women. Her mother was both practical and
Repairing them was as much art as trade.
artistic, capable of running a large workshop and of recreating beautiful artworks
When Bourgeois’s father came home from
of the past. Though strong in many ways,
the war, he scouted the countryside for
her mother was not physically vital. She’d
tapestries (often repurposed to divide up
barely survived the Spanish flu during
barns or keep horses warm on cold nights)
World War I (an epidemic that killed some
while her mother ran a workshop out of
forty-three thousand soldiers), and Bour-
their home, overseeing a staff of twenty-five
geois spent much of her childhood attending to her mother’s health. She said she wanted to be indispensible, and she was in other ways as well. By age ten, Bourgeois was drawing in the missing parts of tapestries. Since they were huge and heavy, they’d often been dragged along, wearing away the bottoms. “I became an expert at drawing legs and feet,” Bourgeois said. “It taught me that art can be interesting, as well as useful. That is how my art started.” It was in the workshop’s sewing room, sitting with gossiping women intent on work but free to talk, that Bourgeois discovered her young English nanny was also her father’s mistress. The rage it inspired fueled her art for decades. Her father considered contemporary artists “parasites,” but when Bourgeois’s mother died in 1932 (ah, these dead mothers!), she abruptly switched from studying math at the Sorbonne to studying art. For her, the two pursuits were not so far apart. “The sculpture is a problem to be solved,” Bourgeois said. “And it is a pleasure to find a solution.” She studied in excellent studios
Louise Bourgeois. Fillette. 1968. Latex over plaster, 23½ x 11 x 7½ inches. The Museum of Modern Art. © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, NY.
by exchanging translating skills for art instruction (it was Americans who could pay, so she at least had her hated English
128
nanny to thank for that). Bourgeois knew
conception, it’s mostly amusing. Bulbous,
many Surrealist artists, but refused the
wrinkly, and oversize, it is, by implication, a
roles they proffered, which was as either
little overblown. A take underscored by the
model or mistress.
work’s title, Fillette, which means “Little Girl.”
In 1938, she met an American art historian named Robert Goldwater while selling
Not so mighty after all, Mr. Penis. It might
him a Picasso print in a small gallery she
be called “my little pet,” and that’s just how
ran inside the family’s tapestry workshop
it’s portrayed in a famous photograph of
in Paris. “In between conversations about
Bourgeois taken by Robert Mapplethorpe in
Surrealism and the latest trends,” she said,
1982. Bourgeois, grinning and pleased with
“we got married.”
herself, has Fillette tucked casually under one arm, her right hand cupped beneath the glans penis as if it were the muzzle of
*****
a small dog—a wiener dog?—tucked under Marrying Goldwater got her out of Paris
the arm of her fur coat. She might be any
and into New York, which was fortunate,
lady who lunches in midtown, one who
as World War II was on the horizon. Just
doesn’t go anywhere without her little pet.
as fortunate, it meant leaving behind the
A different sort of lady. As if Leonardo’s
weight of European art history, along with
Lady with Ermine were reincarnated in
social and familial constraints.
1980s Manhattan, fondling a phallus instead of a weasel.
By 1941, Bourgeois was une vrai femme maison, a housewife with three young sons
*****
and a respected New York intellectual for a husband. She kept making art, though not everyone knew that professor Gold-
By the time she made Fillette in 1968,
water’s wife was also an artist. Surrealists
Bourgeois was showing her work after a
who’d likewise escaped Europe sometimes
long hiatus from active participation in the
gathered at their home. Bourgeois was
art world. She’d done the Femme Maison
unimpressed. “I objected to them,” she said.
series in 1946–1947, then not long after had
“They were so lordly and pontifical.” Shades
given up painting for good. From as far back
of the father. Shades, certainly, of a male
as her studies in Paris, her instructor, the
prerogative that she resisted, and some-
painter Fernand Léger, had told her, “You
times skewered in her work.
are not a painter. You are a sculptor.”
While a 2-ft/61-cm latex penis might imply
Her first sculptures were tall abstract
certain pornographic (and male wish-
standing pieces carved from lightweight
fulfillment?) properties, in Bourgeois’s
balsa wood that she called her Personages.
129
“You can have a family and work in wood,”
the New Yorker in 2002. In a long career of
she explained. “It’s not dirty. It’s not noisy.
truth-telling, Bourgeois was always grateful
It’s a humble, practical medium.” The
for her husband. And yet, after his death
totemic Personages, bolted directly to the
she flourished, and so did her work.
floor without bases, were almost like a small crowd of their own populating her first one-
Bourgeois died in 2010 at age ninety-eight, a
woman show of sculpture in 1949.
celebrated artist working until the end.
Her father died in 1951, which rattled Bour-
*****
geois to her core. Her violent reaction to his death somehow stopped her from showing
Four years later, in 2014, Martha and I
for a decade, but she kept working.
were together for the first time in a decade. Goldwater taught art history at the
Circling fifty, our hair now the same dirty
Institute of Fine Arts, where one of his
blonde and shoulder length, we were both
students was Lucy Lippard. As a young
mothers of two teenaged children, an older
critic, Lippard curated a groundbreaking
boy and a younger girl each. Both married
show in 1966 called “Eccentric Abstrac-
to the men we’d been dating twenty-five
tion.” Bourgeois hadn’t shown for some
years before, the fathers of those children.
time, but Lippard heard about her former
We’d both known what it was to be a femme
professor’s wife’s work and paid a call to
maison, like Bourgeois, managing children
her basement studio. What Lippard found astonished her. “Many artists destroy their
alongside careers in art. We’d ended up more
work not because it is bad but because it is
alike than I could have imagined possible.
not successful—because other people are
Except that Martha had gotten her PhD
not interested in it,” Bourgeois said. Years
and become a full professor, while I’d left
of steady, inventive work filled every space
the Institute to write.
of her studio.
We were back in New York, so revisiting
Lippard featured Bourgeois in her “Eccen-
the Institute of Fine Arts was essential. We
tric Abstraction” show alongside artists
peeked in on the old seminar room with its
decades her junior. The older artist was a hit.
big round table, and the lecture hall next door, once the mansion’s former ballroom,
Timing couldn’t have been better. Feminism was on the rise and Bourgeois was the
lined by mirrors and gilt pilasters, lit by
perfect object lesson: a talented visionary
chandeliers. We crossed the Great Hall,
who’d been unjustly overlooked. In 1973,
with its curving staircase and multilevel
her husband, Robert, died. “I was a run-
tapestry that might have made me think of
away girl, and Robert saved me,” she told
Louise Bourgeois, if I’d had her in mind.
130
We looked in the “Oak Room,” where wine and tea were served after Friday afternoon lectures, then wandered into the “Marble Room,” with its wall-to-wall golden-hued stone, where we ate and bitched and gossiped. How many hours did I sit in that room? More than in any lecture or seminar, that’s certain. “Look,” Martha said. Pushed against one wall was a model of the building we were in, on a stand in an open cage, with movable oval mirrors above and to each side. “I forgot about this,” I said, moving closer. I’d seen the press release when it was donated, but never thought of it again. Bourgeois had created and then given to the school a work called The Institute. It was
vision, it seemed out of place in her oeuvre.
Louise Bourgeois. The Institute. 2002. Silver, 12 x 27¾ x 18¼ inches. Steel, glass, mirrors, and wood vitrine: 70 x 40 x 24 inches. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, NY.
Later I read a piece by feminist art his-
There I was again with Martha in the Mar-
torian and Institute grad Linda Nochlin,
ble Room, as we’d been hundreds of times
quoting Bourgeois: “The Institute played
many years ago.
as literal as could be imagined: a replica. Far from Bourgeois’s typically astonishing
an important part in my life. For many
We touched the mirrors, turning them up
years my husband Robert Goldwater taught
and down, getting the bird’s-eye view of
there. The four o’clock Friday lectures and
the roof and angles on the side walls, but
tea were events I enjoyed.” Oh, me too.
never able to see inside. Cast in silver, The
There was something Alice-in-Wonderland-
Institute’s windows coolly reflected back at
like about being inside the Institute looking
us. There is always something unerringly
at an artwork called The Institute that was
true about Bourgeois’s choice of material.
just that: the Institute. It was like I’d taken
Silver is a chilly medium. And though The
some of those Wonderland pills and things
Institute can apparently be taken apart—
were swerving bigger, then smaller, then
each floor dismantled and peered into, like
bigger. Time was zooming in and out, too.
a 3-D jigsaw puzzle of rooms and levels—if
131
Louise Bourgeois. Maman. 1999. Bronze, stainless steel, marble. 30.5 x 33 feet. © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, NY.
you are just looking (the case for most any
but not always so—at times, the struggle
viewer), you cannot see in. The entire thing
itself was exhilarating and energizing.
feels exclusive, hermetic to the point of
Bourgeois’s late work, among other things,
being off-limits.
reminds me of the contradictory aspects of a vanished past.”
That’s a little how it felt when I was a student there, too. As if, again, by some
I was overcome with a sense of the past col-
looking-glass magic I had made it inside a
liding with the present. “I miss this,” I said.
place where I did not belong.
Martha laughed her throaty, ’40s-movie-star
Or maybe I did.
laugh. “You could still have it,” she said, as
Linda Nochlin said of her time as a young
time to go. I followed her out, hoping she
woman at the Institute, “It was difficult,
was right.
if that were obvious, then gesturing it was
132
This book starts soon after Martha said
Spiders are like mothers, at least Bour-
those words. Having just finished a years-
geois’s mother. They are also like artists,
long project, I suddenly knew it was women
weaving, creating, repairing. In that way,
artists I wanted to write about next.
Bourgeois is a kind of Maman, too, a benevolent mother for us all.
***** Probably Bourgeois’s most famous—and most loved—late work is Maman, a towering 30-ft-/914-cm-high spider, originally in steel with six copies cast in bronze. Maman’s eight dark, rough-hewn legs and skittery stance are as far as can be imagined from the glinty architectonic severity of The Institute, though they were made within a few years of each other. Bourgeois’s imagination always contained multitudes. Maman means “mother,” and beneath her abdomen hangs a clutch of twenty-six marble eggs. Far from horror-movie sinister, the giant spider radiates a strange benevolence. When displayed at venues across the world, children play beneath its legs and busy urbanites stop to take smiling photos. Bourgeois easily explained Maman’s appeal: “The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. . . . Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.”
133
CHAPTER 12:
RUTH ASAWA Whenever there was a free moment, I would sit down and do some work. Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done. —RUTH ASAWA
I N T H E S P R I N G O F 194 2, sixteen-year-
interned at an enemy detention camp in
old Ruth Aiko Asawa, born and raised
New Mexico. For the next six months,
in Norwalk, California, packed a single
Asawa didn’t know whether her father was
suitcase of belongings and together with
alive or dead. She would not see him again
her mother and five of her six siblings
for six years.
reported to the Santa Anita Racetrack for
At Santa Anita, the remainder of Asawa’s
internment. The previous December, Japan
family inhabited the racetrack’s former
had bombed Pearl Harbor. Her younger
horse stalls. “We were given two stalls,”
sister, Nancy (Kimiko), was then in Japan
Asawa said. “My brothers lived in one and
visiting extended family, and was forced to
we lived in the other. They gave us an army
remain for the duration of the war. Asawa’s
blanket, a pillow, and a cot. We made our
father, a truck farmer (independent, local,
own mattresses out of straw.”
small), buried or burned anything in the family home too overtly Japanese, includ-
Asawa, a young woman whose entire world
ing kendo equipment, decorative books,
had been ripped to pieces, later told an
and dolls. But as an older businessman
interviewer, “We had a really good time,
in the local Japanese community, he was
actually. I enjoyed it.”
still suspect. In February 1942, Umakichi Asawa was arrested by FBI agents, then
Heh?
135
Some eighteen thouseand people of
famed Art Institute of Chicago was too
Japanese heritage were interned at Santa
expensive. So with the assistance of a
Anita while Asawa was there, a lively
Quaker-funded scholarship, she nabbed the
concentration of culture and talent. Asawa
cheapest school available: Milwaukee State
went from being a girl attending a (sur-
Teachers College.
prisingly) diverse public school, to direct
At age seventeen Asawa arrived alone in
instruction from Japanese Americans who
Milwaukee, ready to begin her education as
came from the highest ranks of professional
an art teacher. She did well for three years,
fields. An ad-hoc school was set up in the
but in her fourth she needed classroom
racetrack’s bleachers and there Asawa had
experience to graduate and her advisors
her first contact with career artists, includ-
would not place her in Milwaukee’s public
ing the former director of the Art Students
schools due to lingering ill-will against the
League of Los Angeles, at least one WPA
Japanese. Asawa left college without a
artist, and three animators from the Disney
degree. (Decades later, the school tried giv-
Studios.
ing her an honorary doctorate, but Asawa insisted on the BA she’d earned instead.)
“How lucky could a sixteen-year-old be?” Asawa said.
Fortunately, the summer before her final
Ever optimistic, not given to grudges, Asawa
year in Milwaukee, Asawa had taken a
was no Pollyanna, either. When made to
bus to Mexico with her eldest sister, Lois
say the Pledge of Allegiance at Rohwer
(Masako), who was studying Spanish. In
Relocation Center in Arkansas, where her
Mexico City, Asawa saw José Orozco paint-
family was sent after six months at Santa
ing a public mural, and took an art class at
Anita, she and her classmates added their
the Universidad de Mexico with Clara Porset, a Cuban refugee and friend of German
own coda after with liberty and justice for
refugee artist Josef Albers, who was then
all—adding, with a loud bravura flourish,
teaching at an experimental school in North
Except us!
Carolina called Black Mountain College. She told Asawa about Albers and his school.
*****
When she couldn’t complete the teaching After graduating from the Arkansas relo-
program, Asawa thought of Albers. “Had
cation center high school, Asawa availed
Milwaukee State Teachers College not
herself of a government-paid bus ticket
rejected me and forced me to the alterna-
to any Midwest college (no one of Japa-
tive of Black Mountain College, I would
nese heritage was allowed on the coasts).
have retired as an art teacher with retire-
Already, she wanted to study art, but the
ment benefits,” she said. Mexico and Black
136
Mountain College meant everything to what Asawa would become. The summer after she started at Black Mountain, Asawa returned to Mexico, where she taught drawing to children in Toluca. From villagers she learned how to weave baskets out of wire, a strategy of utilizing what was effective and at hand. The technique—no more complicated than crochet—beautifully met many criteria that Asawa had soaked up under Albers’s tutelage. Before the war, Albers had studied and taught at the Bauhaus, an influential German school that fed European Modernism, from painting, sculpture, and architecture to craftwork and industrial design. Through Albers (among many others, including his wife, renowned textile designer, Anni), the rational ideals of the Bauhaus were transmitted to American artists: refined simplicity, elegance, truth to material. When she returned to Black Mountain that fall, Asawa began creating her own works in wire. “You make the line, a two-dimensional line, then you go into space, and you have a three-dimensional piece. It’s like drawing in space,” she said. She’d discovered a humble
Ruth Asawa. Untitled. c. 1955.
method that utilized industrial materials to create forms as elegant as nature itself.
Bourgeoning, breathing, they sway as they
Asawa’s hanging chain-mail baskets feel
hang and cast complicated, ever-changing
almost like they might have been birthed
shadows.
in a kind of mechanized petri dish. They are both insistently man-made and feel
*****
elemental, living parts of the natural world.
137
Ruth Asawa. Andrea Fountain. 1968.
I knew about Ruth Asawa from the history
city landmarks molded by local children;
of Black Mountain. Her fellow students
and others—filled me, I confess, with some
included such influential artists as Ray
dismay. These were products of Black Moun-
Johnson and Robert Rauschenberg, while
tain?
instructors spanned the gamut, from painter Jacob Lawrence to composer John Cage,
They’re not my thing, but so what? Many
from choreographer Merce Cunningham to
people adore them, including the throngs
architect Buckminster Fuller, her mentor
who rallied to defend the landmark-filled
and lifelong friend.
fountain when Apple started its demolition for its new building in a shared plaza on
So I respected Asawa but knew little
Union Square.
about her until moving to San Francisco, where she was famous as “the fountain
So I didn’t “get” Ruth Asawa. That is, until
lady.” Said fountains—mermaids, one on
one Sunday when I visited the de Young
a sea turtle nursing a merbaby; a cylinder
Museum with my teenaged son. He needed
jam-packed horror vacui style with notable
to find a work of art he liked for a class
138
and document—i.e., stand next to it and
We turned the blind corner to the atrium
take a picture—his choice. I was thrilled
with the elevators and I caught my breath.
he wanted me there, ready to instruct and
Hanging above and around us were more
advise.
than a dozen works in wire, some dangling baskets, some starbursts of spiky metal,
Surprise! It didn’t go that way. I started by
some shimmering cascades of chain mail.
pointing out an awesome, painterly Richard
Light played through the layers and shapes,
Diebenkorn—noncommittal shrug—then
causing shifting shadows to play over the
moved onto Wayne Thiebaud’s groovy Pop
walls, floor, and ceiling, as if we were under-
art territory—nothing—and on and on
water. I frickin’ loved it.
through the Modern galleries. It wasn’t “What about these?” I said.
until one of the more retardataire sections of the nineteenth century that he found the
My son gave a noncommittal nod. “Pretty
one. He handed me his phone. I pointed it at
cool,” he said, pushing the Up button.
him, my eyes wide. I took a second picture with my phone and texted my husband:
It was an almost perfect inversion of my
Where did we go wrong?
first real museum experience, when I was barely a teen myself. We’d driven cross
There was our son, messy surfer hair, black
country in July, from Montana to D.C., in a
San Franpsycho T-shirt hanging on his
van with no air-conditioning. So the Smith-
skinny body, grinning in front of Frederic
sonian was like heaven, cool and spare and
Church’s romantic landscape, Rainy Season
vast. Almost immediately, I spotted a huge
in the Tropics, complete with rose-colored
Cy Twombly (as I now know), grayish green
mist and a rainbow.
and filled end to end in a looping white script that looked like handwriting, but
“What do you like about it?” I asked.
couldn’t be read. It spoke some language I He shrugged, as if I could no more under-
didn’t know, but I still loved it, like hearing
stand the appeal of Frederic Church than I
French for the first time and understanding
could that of World of Warcraft. (“They’re
nothing beyond that it was wonderful, even
related,” my husband wisely pointed out
if I had no idea what was really being said.
later. “Think Middle Earth.”)
I wanted to keep looking, but family friends hurried us along to see “a real painting”
I gave up, suggesting we check out the view
they couldn’t wait to show us.
from Hamon Tower before we left. It was a rare clear day and, in a town of few tall
It was also huge, a Bierstadt mountain
buildings, a coveted chance to look out over
landscape with a mirroring lake reflecting
our beautiful city.
craggy peaks above, surrounded by dusk’s
139
Imogen Cunningham. Ruth Asawa at work with children. 1957.
pink haze. At the water’s edge, a deer fam-
of her teacher, émigré Hans Hofmann: “His
ily shyly drank, innocent but alert. Basi-
was the lesson of abstraction, and I got it.” I
cally, it looked a lot like Montana.
just got abstraction; I liked it straight off.
Why had I so much preferred the first
But for my son it was the reverse, sublime
painting, the one I hadn’t fully understood?
landscape trumping any abstract art, whether
To paraphrase Lee Krasner when speaking
painting or sculpture. He held the elevator
140
doors while I snapped a shot of the wall
did it. Kept making art, kept raising chil-
plaque. In the tower, while he took in the
dren, kept doing all kinds of things. I copied
view, I looked at my phone. The works in the
the picture from the catalog and carried it
atrium were by Ruth Asawa. Now I got her.
around in my notebook. If Asawa could have four kids arrayed around her like a procreative Leonardo Madonna (see his Virgin of
*****
the Rocks), one a diaperless baby helping Before we left I bought a catalog of Asawa’s
himself to a bottle, but keep her head down
work, humbled by my previous disregard.
concentrating on a new piece (while finished
She was so much more than I’d realized.
works float around her family like household gods), then I could write some during my
At Black Mountain, Asawa met a young
daughter’s soccer practice at the to-hell-
architecture student from the South named
and-back fields across town.
Albert Lanier and they hit it off. Lanier heard that you could get a full meal plus a
*****
bottle of wine in North Beach for less than a buck, so in late summer 1948 he headed
Of course Asawa could only do her part.
west and set up shop in San Francisco. That
She couldn’t control the critical assessment
fall, the California Supreme Court struck
of her, or her art. In reviewing her work
down laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
in 1954, TIME magazine described the
The summer of 1949 Asawa married Lanier
artist: “Rush Asawa, 28, is a San Francisco
in San Francisco. They had six children in
housewife and mother of three.” Though
ten years.
the article says she “studied under Abstract Painter Josef Albers at Black Mountain
The year before she was married, Asawa
College,” it only compares her work to
exhibited her first wire “basket” pieces at
another Japanese American sculptor, Isamu
Black Mountain College. In 1950, the year
Noguchi (who, the article points out, studied
after her marriage, she showed similar
with Constantin Brancusi). Though both
pieces at the Art Association Annual at the
Americans who studied with Europeans, the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She
reviewer insists: “Noguchi and Asawa share
had her first two children that same year.
one quality of Oriental art that Western
Point being, neither marriage nor children
artists often lack: economy of means. Their
impeded her work.
Japanese ancestors devoted vast efforts to
This fabulous photograph by Asawa’s
making a single brushstroke look easy.” So
friend, celebrated photographer Imogen
there you go, art by genetic transmission
Cunningham, demonstrates how: She just
rather than by serious study with European
141
Ruth Asawa. Untitled. c. 1962.
artists whose work was utterly defined by
enjoy its unusual, outer-space shape, and
economy and radical simplicity (see Brancu-
she did. But when she tried drawing the
si’s Bird in Space or Albers’s Homage to the
plant, its unusual structure proved diffi-
Square).
cult to capture in two dimensions, so she began sculpting. A new style of “tied” wire sculpture was born, anchored at the center
*****
while simultaneously reaching up and down into space.
Asawa explored the possibility of wire for decades, following line into space wherever
These could almost be portraits of the
it led, neither burdened by past success nor
artist.
afraid to explore new styles.
Her career was, more or less from the start,
In the 1960s, friends brought her a desert
one of national and even international scope.
plant from Death Valley, thinking she’d
By the end of the 1950s, Asawa had already
142
exhibited across the country, including New York shows at the Peridot Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and at the American Art Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, where one of her pieces was the cover of the exhibition catalog. Just six years after leaving Black Mountain College, one of her hanging pieces was included in the 1955 São Paulo Biennial. If her reach was wide, Asawa’s roots ran deep, not just in her family that came to include more than a dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but also in the community. In addition to public fountains, murals, and mosaics, Asawa spearheaded the Alvarado Arts Workshop, a successful effort to keep art in financially strapped San Francisco public schools. And she was instrumental in starting a public arts high school in the city, the first on the West Coast, now called the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Child of truck farmers, Asawa was profoundly gifted at growing things: art, children, a long marriage, deep and lasting changes in public education. She was herself a force of nature.
143
CHAPTER 13:
ANA MENDIETA She was excited and optimistic. She told me she was going to give up drinking and smoking because women artists did not get recognition until they were old. She said that she wanted to live long enough to savor it. —B. RUBY RICH
Perhaps she had become addicted to exile. —J O H N P E R R E A U L T
I N T H E H O T E A R LY M O R N I N G of
Because Mendieta is known for the ethereal
September 8, 1985, a doorman working the
self-portraits-cum-crime-scene-outlines
night shift in Greenwich Village heard a
she called Siluetas—and because the police
woman’s voice pierce the night, screaming,
took no photos—it’s tempting to imagine the
“No, No, No, No,” then moments later, the
scene. Rather than gruesome, I want to pic-
sound of a large object striking somewhere
ture Mendieta as she was in her very first Silueta: a naked body covered in white flow-
nearby.
ers, all ripeness and purity, associating her
Artist Ana Mendieta, thirty-six years old
own procreative forces with the power of
and married less than a year to renowned
the Great Goddess. Or perhaps, like Silueta
sculptor Carl Andre, fifty-two, had just
Muerta here (see page 146), her arms raised
plummeted from the bedroom window
overhead in an ancient gesture of prayer.
of their nearby apartment—thirty-four stories—and died on impact.
*****
145
marking Andre’s face and arms. He showed the officers a book about himself, saying, “I am a very successful artist and she wasn’t. Maybe that got to her, and in that case, maybe I did kill her.” Two things are worth pointing out here. One, Mendieta, recently returned from working at the American Academy in Rome after winning the prestigious Rome Prize, was plenty successful. Two, both artists were big drinkers and had been drinking heavily that night. Even Andre doesn’t seem to know exactly what happened; over the years, he’s given three very different accounts. First to the 911 operator, then to the police, then to the New Yorker. In the magazine’s 2011 interview, Andre told Calvin Tomkins that the warm night had turned suddenly cool and Mendieta had gotten up from their bed to close the window and “just lost her
Ana Mendieta. Silueta Muerta. 1976.
balance.” But there is more than eerie symbolism
Andre was arrested and briefly held. Bitter
lurking in this story. On the 911 tapes, after
art-world factions sprang up immediately,
her fall, Andre informed the emergency
for and against him. No question, Andre had
operator that he and his wife were both
power and wealth on his side. Artist friends
artists and had been arguing about his being
paid his bail, and in 1988, he was acquitted.
more “exposed to the public than she was”
A celebrated pioneer of Minimalist sculp-
and that in the heated course of things “she
ture, Andre and his brilliant career were
went out the window.” A bizarrely passive
affected not at all.
construction, as if she were a little bird who’d suddenly taken flight. Mendieta was
*****
indeed little, under 5 ft/152 cm tall, weighing just 93 lb/42 kg. Their high bedroom window was barely within her reach.
I only discovered Mendieta in 1992, the year
When the police arrived, they found the
tion (now defunct) not far from the gallery
room in wild disarray, fresh scratches
where my husband worked.
the Guggenheim opened its new SoHo loca-
146
I’d been following media coverage of the
am—and timeless. Mendieta made Siluetas
new space for weeks, when I read this from
for seven years, creating outlines of the
Roberta Smith in the New York Times: “At
female form—frequently her own—from
the opening preview of the Guggenheim
materials of the natural world. She often
Museum SoHo on Thursday evening, 400
left the imprint of her body directly on the
demonstrators protested the fact that this
earth, whether stone, mud, leaves, graves,
exhibition included only one woman and no
or more. The Siluetas were ephemeral in
minority artists, and also that it featured
nature, but Mendieta carefully preserved
the work of Mr. Andre, who was found not
them via photographs and film.
guilty of murder in the death of his wife, the
The more I discovered about Mendieta, the
artist Ana Mendieta.”
more amazed I was by how much she had done. The Siluetas were the beginning of a
Wait, what?
new and powerful art form she pioneered, “As these objections suggest,” Smith con-
one combining earthworks, feminism, per-
tinued, “the show is not the most diplomatic
formance, conceptual art, photography, and
way for the Guggenheim to introduce itself
film. Where was Ana Mendieta? She was
to the downtown art world.”
everywhere, if you knew what to look for.
Some protestors at the SoHo Guggenheim
Born in Cuba, she came to the United
preview carried a large banner that read:
States in 1961 at the age of twelve with her
Carl Andre is in the Guggenheim. Where is
sister Raquelin, fourteen. They had only
Ana Mendieta? ¿Dónde estás Ana Mendieta?
each other, having left behind their mother and younger brother; their father, once a
I’d been hearing about Carl Andre’s Mini-
Revolutionary stalwart, had been jailed by
malist sculptures since I began studying art
Castro. Operation Pedro Pan saw fourteen
history. His name and work were every-
thousand children airlifted from Cuba to the
where—museums, galleries, Manhattan
United States under the aegis of the Catho-
apartments—along with work by contem-
lic Church. When she stepped off the plane
poraries like Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and
in Miami, Mendieta kissed the ground.
Robert Ryman.
Her romance with America was short-lived.
But who was Mendieta?
The sisters were sent to Iowa of all places,
I had to go looking for her.
where they often lived apart in a series
The first things I located were all about
schools. From a prominent Cuban family
her death, then finally, in a book on art
that proudly traced its ancestry to Spain,
of the 1970s on our own bookshelf, I saw
the girls were blindsided by the racism in
my first versions of her Siluetas, ghostly
Iowa. “It never entered our minds that we
outlines that were both immediate—Here I
were colored,” Raquelin said. The isolation
of orphanages, foster homes, and reform
147
and abuse they experienced as teenagers
Earth Art tended toward the massive and
made a rebel of Mendieta, one fiercely proud
the masculine, requiring big machines and
of her identity as a Cuban woman.
accompanying egos. Works such as Michael Heizer’s Double Negative and Walter De
She studied art at the University of Iowa,
Maria’s The Lightning Field epitomize
and stayed for graduate school. It was
the muscular size and scope of the style.
there, in the homely dirt of the Midwest,
If there were an ancient prototype for the
that Mendieta founded a new art form when
new art, it would be Stonehenge way back
she was still a student.
in the Neolithic, impressive and lasting, at least in part because it’s just so damned big. The Neolithic inspiration for Mendieta runs
*****
more to the plastered skulls of Jericho and In 1981, Mendieta wrote in an artist’s state-
myriad Great Goddess images found all over
ment, “I have been carrying out a dialogue
the world.
between the landscape and the female body
According to art historian Jane Blocker,
(based on my own silhouette). I believe
Mendieta made over two hundred works
this has been a direct result of my having
utilizing the earth as a key component. “I
been torn from my homeland (Cuba) during
make sculptures in the landscape. Because
my adolescence. I am overwhelmed by the
I have no motherland, I feel a need to join
feeling of having been cast from the womb
with the earth, to return to her womb.”
(nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe. It
Nowhere is earth as womb more vivid than
is a return to the maternal source.” Mend-
in her Volcano series. The Volcanoes are
ieta sometimes filled in the Siluetas with
both vaginal and womblike, implying sex,
spirals, labyrinths, or a raised bisecting line.
creation, fertility, and—through what she
And sometimes she made a raised portion
did with them—transformation.
first, like a kind of crater, then formed a
Alongside earth, Mendieta often used blood
Silueta down inside, almost like a small figure of herself within an earthen womb.
and gunpowder, essential elements in the
When Mendieta first began working in the
that fascinated her. Mendieta earnestly
natural world in the early 1970s, Earth
believed in the mysterious potential of
Art was a powerful new idiom in American
art. As a student, she’d rejected painting
sculpture. Probably the most famous of the
because of what it could not do: “I realized
early earthworks was Robert Smithson’s
that my paintings were not real enough for
Spiral Jetty, 1970, where the artist created
what I wanted the images to convey and
a 1,500-ft-/457-m-long coil of rock and earth
by real I mean I wanted my images to have
spinning counterclockwise into Utah’s Great
power, to be magic.” It may sound a little
Salt Lake.
New Age nutty, but Mendieta undercuts
rituals of Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion
148
Ana Mendieta. Volcano Series no. 2. 1979.
Ana Mendieta. Volcano Series no. 2. 1979.
149
any bullshit with her intensity. She was fierce. Like an artist-shaman, in Volcano Series no. 2 from 1979, shown here, she molded the earth to her purposes, filled the goddessshaped hole with gunpowder, and set it on fire. The transformation of gunpowder— light-filled, spewing, active, and alive—to dead ash was a kind of transubstantiation of matter. One she, as the artist, had performed in and on the earth. Magic.
***** In 1983, Mendieta took up residence at the American Academy in Rome. The city was a revelation. It offered a new context for her Latin heritage. According to author Robert Katz, Rome was “a midplace in the geography of her soul between Cuba and America, neither motherland nor fatherland, a kind of sisterland where she felt strong and free.” With use of a dedicated studio, Mendieta began working indoors for the first time. Her final pieces were also her first meant to be exhibited in a gallery just as she’d made them, objects in themselves, with a palpable sense of permanence. Totemic and upright, they’re made from large, often curving slabs of the trunks of fallen trees. A contemporary letter from her dealer mentions a “shield project,” of which these are likely part. Ana Mendieta. Untitled. 1985.
Which, it turns out, is heartbreaking.
150
An Italian collaborator of Mendieta’s told
relentlessly documented her work at every
the artist’s niece (Raquel Cecilia Mendieta,
stage. More than a hundred films alone
a filmmaker) that the original piece of
(many recently discovered) are part of her
curved wood once had a handle in the back,
wide-ranging oeuvre, which includes per-
implying its protective purpose. Onto the
formance pieces on rape, on the slaughter
trunks’ surfaces, Mendieta burned shadowy
of animals, on transformation and rebirth,
shapes with gunpowder. These mysterious
self-portraits with her nude body manipu-
symbols recall the magical power superim-
lated and distorted as it’s pressed against
posed on shields of the past. Constantine, for example, affixing the Chi Rho—symbol
sheets of glass, self-portraits with masculine
of Christ—on the shields of his men at the
facial hair, and so much more.
Battle of the Milvian Bridge, not far from
In recent years, Canadian artist Elise
Mendieta’s own studio in Rome, from which he had emerged victorious more than 1,500
Rasmussen began visiting many of the
years before.
sites of Mendieta’s works in Iowa, Mexico, and Cuba. Though she was told again and
But as Raquel Mendieta ruefully notes of
again that there was nothing left, she found
her aunt’s last artworks, “These shields did
plenty. This, it seems, was Mendieta’s hope.
not protect Ana.”
In a piece in the New Inquiry, Haley Mlotek quotes Cuban-American curator Olga Viso
*****
on Mendieta’s interest in the “residue” of Thirty years after the death of Ana Mend-
her works: “She liked to think that someone
ieta, the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon,
hiking in the area might discover one of her
New York, featured a retrospective of Carl
weathered Siluetas and believe that they
Andre’s work. Protestors cried “Tears for
had stumbled upon a prehistoric gravesite,
Ana Mendieta” inside the exhibition and
carving, or painting.”
wrote “Ana” in fake blood in the snow outside. At Dia headquarters in Manhattan,
That makes sense. In her Silueta Muerta
others dripped chicken blood across a ban-
and many others, Mendieta claimed herself
ner on the sidewalk reading, “I Wish Ana
as part of the earth, part of time itself. As
Mendieta Was Still Alive.”
protean and prolific as any artist of her generation, she created powerful art still alive
Her absence is felt as a great weight.
in the world.
Many long for what might have been.
Where is Ana Mendieta?
But look how much there is.
All around us.
Though most of her art was meant to be “ephemeral” in one way, Mendieta
151
CHAPTER 14:
KARA WALKER Often I’ll be surprised at even what I could think, self-righteous goody-two-shoes that I am. —KARA WALKER
Mommy makes mean art. —HER DAUGHTER
S O , I M I S S E D O N E of the great events
stereotypical knotted head rag, nipples for-
in twenty-first-century American art. Like
ward, bum high. She is beautiful and terrible,
skipping Woodstock, or passing up the
haunting and sickening and humorous. And,
Six Gallery reading where Allen Ginsberg
she’s made of sugar.
debuted Howl. An essential cultural moment,
The show’s title does not include the words
squandered. And there’s no getting it back.
mammy or sphinx. That would be too easy.
It’s gone now. Forever.
Instead, it was nearly as epic as the main event. An announcement at the entrance
And that sucks.
read:
In early May 2014, artist Kara Walker
At the behest of Creative Time, Kara E.
unveiled a genuine colossus in Brooklyn, a
Walker has confected:
75.5-ft-/2,301-cm-long, 35.5-ft-/1,082-cm-high gritty and glistening white mammy sphinx.
A Subtlety
In photographs, her ample whiteness fills the
or the Marvelous Sugar Baby
dark-but-soaring industrial space she inhabits.
an Homage to the unpaid and overworked
She crouches, impassive face framed by a
Artisans who have refined
153
Kara Walker. At the behest of Creative Time Kara E. Walker has confected: A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. 2014. A project of Creative Time. Domino Sugar Refinery, Brooklyn, NY, May 10–July 6, 2014. © Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
A brief and very much not-exhaustive tour:
our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World
Commissioned by Creative Time, an
on the Occasion of the demolition of the
organization dedicated to ambitious public
Domino Sugar Refining Plant.
art projects, A Subtlety was anything but.
There is so much to unpack in this piece,
Except, actually, it was. It turns out “sub-
it could easily furnish an entire chapter of
tleties” were once elaborate edible sugar
its own, with lots left over for its very own
sculptures made to adorn the tables of the
doorstopper of a book. If you listen closely,
über-rich. Who knew?
you can almost hear the clickety-click of
Well, Walker, for one. And in addition to
dissertations well underway.
using the very material that same factory processed to create a monument to its
So, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby.
154
demise (Domino donated 160,000 lbs/
Though the sphinx of ancient Greece (the
72,572 kg pounds of sugar for its construc-
female one, as opposed to the male Egyp-
tion), she mined sugar’s dark past, one she’s
tian version) was malevolent, Walker’s
compared to the “blood diamonds” of today:
creature is anything but. She is terrible, in
“Sugar crystallizes something in our Amer-
the sense that she is large and imposing—
ican Soul. It is emblematic of all Industrial
awe-inspiring as an ancient god—but she is
Processes. And of the idea of becoming
also reserved, regal, above the fray. She is ennobling, even in her position, which is an
white. White being equated with pure and ‘true,’ it takes a lot of energy to turn brown
unfortunate one.
things into white things. A lot of pressure.”
Some of the Instagram and Twitter posts were, predictably, lame. Too many selfies
The Sugar Baby looks black, but she’s
posed not in front, but behind, pointing at or
white. The ghost of America past.
goofing on the Sugar Baby’s epic-sized labia.
In its day, the Domino Sugar plant pro-
On this point, Walker is philosophical: “I
cessed more than half the raw sugar in the
put a giant ten-foot vagina in the world and people respond to giant ten-foot vaginas in
United Sates, a busy blue-collar factory in
the way that they do. It’s not unexpected.”
a thriving blue-collar town. Now it’s gone
In this piece and many others, Walker is
the way of subtleties past. The nineteenth-
the opposite of the Internet scold. She’s
century building—with its soaring space
saying—in effect—this life, our history, our
and spanning girders, a kind of industrial-
lust and livelihoods and loves, are deeply
age cathedral—was slated for imminent
complicated. Also, they are fucked up.
demolition after the Subtlety show. To be replaced by upscale apartments, half a
But public disregard for the brutal history
million square feet of commercial space,
embodied in her Sugar Baby infuriated
and a waterside promenade.
many. The piece bred plenty of controversy, including protests online and in person.
In its review, the New York Times wrote,
Along with it: effusive praise for the artist.
“The smell hits you first: sweet but with an acrid edge, like a thousand burned
Not so surprising for a woman who won a
marshmallows.” Which, together with the
MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant at
white colossus herself, reminded me of
age twenty-seven, the second-youngest
the otherworldly, gigantic, and malevolent
recipient ever. (In case you’re keeping
Stay Puft Marshmallow Man at the end
score, the youngest: eighteen.)
of the first Ghostbusters. “I do what I’m feeling and what I’m feeling is monstrous,”
*****
Walker said in a conversation with filmmaker Ava DuVernay. “And I do it in the
For those of you reading this book straight
nicest possible way.”
through: we’ve come full circle. Like
155
Artemisia Gentileschi, and the vast major-
Jerry Saltz happened on some of her work
ity of women artists before the modern
in a shared studio space he was visiting
era, Walker became an artist because she
there, “I felt like a thunderbolt had hit the
was raised by an artist: “One of my earliest
back of my head. I was sickened, thrilled,
memories involves sitting on my dad’s lap
and terrified.”
in his studio in the garage of our house and
That’s an almost perfect summation of my
watching him draw. I remember thinking: ‘I
first encounter with Walker’s work. This
want to do that, too.’”
was at the Drawing Center in SoHo in 1994,
Walker spent her first thirteen years in
back when she was still a RISD student. It
Stockton, gateway town to California’s Cen-
was a little like catching the first Beatles set
tral Valley, where Dad—Larry Walker—was
at the Indra Club in Hamburg. Front row at
a professor and chair of the art department
the revolution.
at the University of the Pacific. In her
I’d started the day at the gallery where my
father’s (correct) view, Stockton was an
husband was a preparator, checking out
artistic backwater and it was holding back
some Byron Kim paintings he’d recently
his career. For his daughter, it was an
hung. They were fantastic: a series of
upbeat ’70s “Free to Be You and Me” child-
monochromatic canvases in earthy tones
hood of pleasant activities and thoughtless
of brown, peach, buff, and sand—J.Crew
diversity. She was black, sure, but everyone
sweater colors made painterly and pure.
was something.
They were lovely, yes, but also oddly com-
Things were very different when Larry
pelling, though I couldn’t say why. They
moved the family to Atlanta in 1983 to take
were neither hard-edged nor painterly, but
a similar position at Georgia State Univer-
somehow they were just right.
sity, a bigger school in a much bigger city.
“They remind me of Brice Marden,” I said
But even by the 1980s, it was a place not
to my husband, high praise.
far enough removed from Jim Crow. The Atlanta Child Murders were a recent terror,
He nodded or didn’t, dashing back and forth
there were monuments to the Confederate
behind me as I looked. He was at work; I
Army in the neighborhood park, and the
wasn’t. “They’re portraits of his friends and
KKK left scary notes on her white boy-
family,” he said at some juncture. “Their
friend’s car. Walker processed almost none
skin colors.”
of it at the time; that came—volubly—later.
Now I loved them. There’s nothing I like
Walker studied at the Atlanta College of
more than a good portrait. Abstraction plus
Art, then the Rhode Island School of Design
portraiture—the seemingly impossible—
for grad school, where she had her break-
was pretty close to perfection in my book. I
through. When New York magazine critic
had a little freak-out in front of them.
156
Kara Walker. Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart. 1994. Cut paper on wall. 156 x 600 inches. © Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
Artist Glenn Ligon was there (it occurs
and self-assured and . . . pretty. 50 ft/15 m
to me that it may have been his show my
of gracefully cut silhouettes superimposed
husband was hanging while I hung out). He
across the wall’s white surface.
saw or (please God, no) heard me and came
Then I looked closer. My next thought:
over. We admired Kim’s paintings together
Holy. Shit.
and then he said something like, If you like these, you should check out this artist
Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil
named Kara Walker down the street. When
War as It Occurred Between the Dusky
I asked for details, he said to just go, that I
Thighs of One Young Negress and Her
needed to see for myself.
Heart was, frankly, terrifying.
So I strolled blithely into the Drawing
Walker’s silhouettes are nearly life-size.
Center, expecting more abstract paintings.
I felt subsumed in the scene, pulled in,
I was charmed to see nothing of the kind.
implicated. I wasn’t totally sure what was
And not conceptual art or Neo-expressionist
going on, but whatever it was, it was deeply
paintings or graffiti art or any of the things
disturbing.
you might have expected to see in SoHo in 1994. This was totally unexpected, something
Reading it, approximately, from left to
almost like a history painting, big and bold
right: A hoop-skirted white woman leans in
157
to kiss a sword-clad “gentleman” beneath
I’ve ever known but could not begin to
a mossy Southern-looking tree. The man’s
understand that painting in the context of
sword pokes backward at the bum of a black
his dining room. Was it really okay for a
child holding the neck of a big strangled
white art historian, curator, and critic to
bird. A black woman who may be part boat
own, much less display, such a painting? I
floats before them. Behind her is a rocky
didn’t know where to look.
outcropping where a white man is being
I later discovered that Robert Colescott,
fellated by a black child. The white man
the artist of Eat Dem Taters, had been a
raises his hands in ecstasy and they point
big influence on Walker, and particularly
to a black man floating above, his engorged
that painting. At least the continuity of my
penis like a balloon carrying him upward.
consternation was consistent.
Below him to the right, a black girl does a scatological jig, while a black woman with a
Like the gruesome humor in Colescott’s
kerchief on her head and a broom in hand is thrust forward by a white man whose head
work, Walker’s Gone shines, in the words of Linda Nochlin, with “a kind of pseudo-
is buried up her skirt.
Rococo perkiness throughout.” Yes, I could see it even on my first encounter:
How did I know the race of any given
racial horror show meets Rococo naughty.
figure, since all of them were black cutouts?
Walker’s Gone is a kind of mash-up of
Stereotypes. The white characters are a
Goya’s Disasters of War and Fragonard’s
Scarlett O’Hara-ish woman and Southern
The Swing. She is their twentieth-century
“gentlemen” in fitted breeches and tails.
love child, equally unflinching in depicting
The skinny black characters have pigtails,
violence and sex.
nappy hair, hanging sacks for clothes. “The silhouette says a lot with very little infor-
I was pretty sure it wasn’t okay for me to
mation, but that’s also what the stereotype
be enjoying Walker’s work so much. I wasn’t
does,” Walker said, of discovering her signa-
even sure it was okay for me, a white girl in
ture style. “So I saw the silhouette and the
her twenties, to be looking at it at all.
stereotype as linked.”
But I couldn’t look away.
Standing there unsettled in the gallery reminded me of an evening at Robert
*****
Rosenblum’s house, where he sometimes hosted students. A reconception of van
I wasn’t the only one who thought I
Gogh’s The Potato Eaters hung on one
shouldn’t be looking. Artist Betye Saar, and
of Rosenblum’s walls. Googly-eyed, big-
many other artists, thought so, too.
lipped black sharecroppers replacing Dutch peasants. On the high right, almost like a
Soon after Walker landed the MacArthur,
flashing neon sign, it said: Eat Dem Taters.
Saar sent some two hundred letters
I respected Rosenblum as much as anyone
(oh, those pre-Internet days—now that
158
was dedication! And not cheap, either) addressed especially to black artists and intellectuals: “I am writing you, seeking your help to spread awareness about the negative images produced by the young African American artist, Kara Walker.” Actually, she wasn’t just asking for awareness, but calling for censorship of Walker’s work (which was effective in at least one instance). Saar said it wasn’t personal, though it’s hard to take her at her word: “I have nothing against Kara except that I think she is young and foolish,” she said. Saar did concede that she found Walker’s work “revolting” and questioned her intentions as an artist. “The goal is to be rich and famous. There is no personal integrity,” Saar said. “Kara is selling us down the river.” Kara Walker. Rebel Leader (from Testimony). 2004. Cut paper with pencil, pressure-sensitive tape, and metal fasteners on board. 18 x 14.5 inches. © Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
Saar’s own, celebrated, work also often utilizes racial stereotypes—Uncle Tom, Aunt Jemima, Little Black Sambo—but with a crystal-clear party line. Her most famous piece, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima from
daughter. It was undoubtedly a psychic and
1972, is a vitrine lined with a backdrop of
spiritual one-two punch, but nothing has
smiling Aunt Jemima faces, presumably
stopped Walker from continuing to make
from pancake boxes. Standing before them
hella difficult art.
is a plump and grinning mammy figurine. Propped against her belly is a picture of a
That’s true even when she’s using an image
mammy holding a white baby. In one hand
similar to Saar’s—in this case, black female
the figure herself holds a broom and in the
stereotype holding broom and gun (from
other, a shotgun. Aunt Jemima may still be
her 2004 video work Testimony: Narrative
smiling, but she’s not gonna take it any-
of a Negress Burdened by Good Fortune).
more. Totally worth saying, and got it.
Violence is not implied, but carried out in
Walker’s art isn’t like that. It’s far more
the lynching of a white slave master (by jit-
complicated, implicating, scary, and confus-
tery silhouette puppets). There is a steady
ing. And it’s brave as hell. When the attacks
willingness to hold a cold eye on the horror.
on her work began, Walker was pregnant
Walker doesn’t just threaten the tough
and, soon after, the mother of a newborn
stuff: she makes us undergo it with her.
159
Kara Walker. Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated). 2005. Offset lithography and silkscreen. Sheet: 39 x 53 inches. © Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
*****
collection. Gary Tinterow, curator of nineteenth-century, modern, and contempo-
One of the slams against Walker early on
rary art (that vast position embodied in one
was that the white establishment just loved
person says a lot about the Met’s relation-
her so much. There may be something
ship to “newer” art), gave Walker carte
there, I don’t know, but it’s hard not to
blanche to do what she wanted: show her
sense the lip-purse of sour grapes. Unques-
own work, the work of some other artist,
tionably, from the MacArthur to the Metro-
a selection, whatever.
politan Museum of Art, Walker has traveled
Walker responded with a timely exhibi-
in the highest of high circles.
tion titled “After the Deluge.” It featured
In 2006, she was the first living artist in
wide-ranging samples of water and
the history of the Met invited to curate an
terror—from an obscure seventeenth-
exhibition using the museum’s permanent
century Dutch etching, The Bursting of St.
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Anthony’s Dike, to a crowd favorite from the American Wing, Winslow Homer’s late nineteenth-century painting Gulf Stream, depicting a solitary black man adrift on a stormy, shark-infested sea. The whole show, title included, was a response to the very real recent horror of Hurricane Katrina. Walker highlighted how often water and terror and race have converged in art and history. Especially American art/history. Of her own works from the Met’s collection, she included her print portfolio, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated). In these works, Walker takes etchings of Harper’s original visual journalism (Harper’s hired thousands of artists, including Winslow Homer, to create images during the war) and superimposes the images of slaves on the mainstream (read: white) narrative. Those were the people and stories of the war that were overlooked, just as the marginalized populations of New Orleans during and after Katrina were; both led to wholesale tragedy. But that’s me talking, not Walker. Though her work is powerful, complicated, and brave (and beautiful), she makes no claims for its usefulness. “I don’t think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history,” she’s said. “I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history.” Or, to quote the epic title from one of her large drawings (that itself quotes, and alters, Martin Luther King), The moral arc of history ideally bends towards justice but just as soon as not curves back around toward barbarism, sadism, and unrestrained chaos. 161
CHAPTER 15:
SUSAN O’MALLEY I want to go back to my eighth grade dream of being an artist. Because if I don’t do it now, then when will I??? Why delay the truth in your heart? — S U S A N O ’ M A L L E Y, A G E 24
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. —ANNIE DILLARD, THE WRITING LIFE
I N 20 14, A R T I S T S U S A N O ’M A L L E Y
Susan O’Malley turned to her art. She made
lost her mother to a degenerative brain
art with her mother.
disease called multiple systems atrophy.
In 2012 O’Malley had a show called My
O’Malley and her five close-knit siblings— four sisters and a brother—watched Lupita
Healing Garden Is Green at the Romer
O’Malley transform over three years from
Young Gallery in San Francisco. The phrase
a vibrant teacher of special needs children
was her mother’s, written after her termi-
to needing a great deal herself. Lupita was,
nal diagnosis. O’Malley asked her mom to
toward the end, wheelchair-bound, with dif-
write down phrases she often used with her
ficulty speaking and writing. Faced with her
children. Lupita O’Malley’s stabbing, broken
mother’s steep decline and sure knowledge
handwriting is almost illegible. But her
that the disease would kill her, O’Malley
daughter framed blown-up prints of those
did not turn to the Catholic faith of her
shaky phrases—graphic black on white
childhood or to hope in some yet-unknown
against white gallery walls—so that they
science.
look almost like gestural abstract paintings,
163
Susan O’Malley. I Love You Baby. 2012.
except that when you look closely, they
The same might be said of O’Malley herself.
coalesce into readable, declarative state-
Actually, the same is said of her.
ments: I Love You Baby. Trick Your Brain
I’m struck by all the lost mothers in this
& Smile. If it takes more energy to frown
brief sampling of women artists. The
then be happy.
mothers of Artemisia Gentileschi, Adélaïde
They are upbeat, heartbreaking, and deeply
Labille-Guiard, Edmonia Lewis, Vanessa
human.
Bell, and Louise Bourgeois all died when their daughters were still children or
“I am so grateful for her,” O’Malley wrote
teenagers. O’Malley was in her late thirties.
about her mother, “not only for agreeing to
And there’s Paula Modersohn-Becker, just
make art with me, but for her endless inspi-
thirty when she died shortly after becoming
ration on how to live: with love, grace and a
a mother herself, leaving behind her infant
sense of humor.”
daughter.
164
It may not be anything common in their
Whitney Biennial), but the cooperative
experience that made these motherless
nature of her art embraces viewers as much
daughters look to art. Maybe it’s coinci-
as fellow artists.
dence, or just the sort of lives I’m drawn to,
While her mother was dying, O’Malley was
or a simple fact of history that if we select
creating work for “Happiness Is,” which
x number of women from before x time, encounters with early death are inevitable.
could have been a gruesome irony. Yet one
But at least in O’Malley’s case, her mother’s
A Healing Walk. Montalvo is situated on
struggle with a terminal illness did help
175 acres/71 ha, with miles of widely utilized
focus her desire to make art. She was
hiking trails. On one steep trail O’Malley
already an artist—lively, productive, p ublic—
installed nine signs of a type that might be
but she was also a busy curator and gallery
found in Muir Woods to the north, explain-
manager for the San Jose Institute of
ing the flora, fauna, or history of the place.
Contemporary Art. It’s all too easy in such
But O’Malley’s signs express states of pres-
positions (curators, art handlers, editors,
ence and of mind, such as: This Beautiful
publishers) to allow the creative work of
Moment, Your Mind Quiets, You Look Up,
others to overshadow your own. Often, it’s
You Are Here Awake and Alive.
of the show’s most moving pieces was her
a necessary fact of making a living. Nine was the number favored by Dante But with her mother’s illness, O’Malley
in structuring his Divine Comedy, which
dedicated herself with more intensity to
begins with a walk: In the middle of our
her own art and in that arena things went
lives / I found myself in a dark woods / the
well. Her pieces were widely exhibited, at
right road lost. Dante’s guide is the poet
prestigious California venues such as Mon-
Virgil; in A Healing Walk, the artist O’Mal-
talvo Arts Center and Yerba Buena Center
ley is ours. And just as Virgil takes Dante
for the Arts, and as far afield as England,
through Hell, then on a steep path up until
Denmark, and Poland. She also began work
they see the stars, O’Malley’s path culmi-
on her first book.
nates in a summit overlooking the quiet balm of the natural world.
At Montalvo in 2013, O’Malley was featured in “Happiness Is” alongside artists
O’Malley’s walk offered healing for herself,
Christine Wong Yap and Leah Rosenberg.
and for others. Her art is generous that way.
“It became a really collaborative project,” according to exhibition curator Donna
Lupita O’Malley died in 2014. By then Susan
Conwell, not least because of O’Malley:
O’Malley had quit her job and was working
“Her working process was so incredibly
full time on her art. Soon after her mother’s
open.” O’Malley further collaborated with
death, she was also focusing on an exciting
Rosenberg in 2014 at Yerba Buena’s Bay
new creative project: she was pregnant with
Area Now 7 (NorCal’s version of, say, the
twin girls. O’Malley was becoming, in the
165
way Paula Modersohn-Becker once so beau-
years before recognizing her mistake. She
tifully captured, procreative in every sense.
didn’t want to “make it” in New York—she wanted, quite simply, to make art.
*****
So she moved in with her mom, where she used the garage as a studio and took art
O’Malley’s early life hardly strikes me as
classes at nearby Foothill College.
fertile ground for a budding artist. She was raised in a nondescript suburb of San Jose,
The above might sound (and feel) a lot like
a place not known for art. A high-achiever,
failure when you’re twenty-four years old
she went to Stanford (class of 1999), where
(and a Stanford grad)—living back with
her friend and fellow undergrad Christina
your mom, going to community college—but
Amini says, “There were very few studio
O’Malley sucked it up and named herself
art majors. Maybe five out of a class of
artist-in-residence of her Willow Glen
fifteen hundred.” O’Malley was not one of
neighborhood in San Jose. Her urban stud-
them. She started as a human biology major,
ies interests—and wry humor—are appar-
with no interest in becoming a doctor, and
ent in her earliest works.
by her junior year realized she was accruing a lot of credits toward urban studies, so she
O’Malley did not to set out to épater the
majored in that and liked it fine. “What was
bourgeoisie she was “stuck” among. No,
exciting to me was that it was about how
she dropped a kindly note in her neighbors’
we live,” O’Malley wrote a few years after
mailboxes letting them know she might
graduation. “How the structures that we’ve
rearrange the leaves on their lawns or
built relate to our human interactions. The
roll up the garden hose in a certain man-
idea of community, and how what we’ve
ner. Neighbors sent supportive notes and
developed makes communities or hurts com-
e-mails. Passersby sometimes asked if she
munities. How all of these ideas intersect
was the new artist-in-residence. One home-
with each other.”
owner created his own lawn leaf pattern.
The thing about places like Stanford (in
From the outset O’Malley’s art had her
case you don’t know) is there’s a white-hot
trademark hijinks and witty charms: a big
spotlight held on success. O’Malley saw this
mowed ring in a grassy expanse of front
as something of a liability: “I realize that it
lawn, like a suburban crop circle; leaves
didn’t leave a lot of room for big mistakes
cleared right along the axis of a tree’s
or wanting to admit big mistakes. But big
potential shadow, as if it were painted
mistakes are part of the learning process
there; a rock garden where white orna-
and how we grow up.” After Stanford,
mental stones have been arranged to read
she followed the traditional path of mov-
“Lawn,” like the old “generic” marketing
ers and shakers and moved to New York
(bag, hat, aspirin) of the ’70s. The work also
with friends. She was there less than two
demonstrates her talent for community, for
166
Susan O’Malley. Lawn. 2008.
elevating all kinds of environments—urban,
She takes up her work like an Andy
suburban, woods, countryside—and maybe
Goldsworthy of the mundane, arranging
most importantly, elevating the people in
rocks and leaves and rolling up hoses. Also,
those environments, whose lives and living
hugging fire hydrants or washing her hands in a birdbath. Watching her reminds me of
spaces are deemed worthy of art.
Joseph Beuys, another earnest explorer
In her short films, How to Be an Artist in
of his own origins. But imagine if instead
Residence and A Few Yards in San Jose,
of Beuys crashing his Luftwaffe plane and
it’s striking how much a part of her envi-
getting wrapped in felt and animal fat by nomadic Tatars, he was raised with five
ronment O’Malley is. She’s no punk rock
siblings in a San Jose subdivision.
anarchist or paint-splattered artiste, but a young woman with plain midlength brown
Beuys’s story is a little like a fairy tale (of
hair in (not especially cool) blue jeans,
the dark, Germanic variety) and there’s
T-shirt, and sneakers.
something of the same in O’Malley’s origins
167
(a brighter, American version). Raised in
so both parties had a copy. After listening
a supportive family, she got into Stanford.
carefully, reflecting back the nature of the
There she made a lifelong best friend,
problem to make sure they nailed it, the
Amini, and met her future husband, Tim
Pep Talk Squad read an Official Pep Talk
Caro-Bruce. If there’s a theme in O’Malley’s
and closed by throwing up their arms like
story, it’s about making art and making
a stadium wave and cheering, “Goooooo
connections, and how she brings those two
Mike!” (Or whatever said Pep Talkee’s
things together: “There is something magi-
name might be.)
cal about breaking the silent space between
Try it. Let someone do it for you, or insert
a stranger and myself. I have a theory that
your own name in front of the mirror and
people are waiting to be asked and to be
cheer for yourself. It feels great. I’d bet
heard.”
Pep Talk Squad recipients also felt great. After the cheer, they received a button
*****
proclaiming, “I had a pep talk today.” Ah, those lucky few.
She was not shy about asking. In grad school at California College of the Arts, she
Pep Talk Squad performances were part
founded the Pep Talk Squad, consisting of
earnest (if awesomely wacky) encourage-
her and Amini in matching checkered Vans
ment of others, and some part critique of
and red track jackets with Pep Talk Squad
the dead seriousness of so much art school
silkscreened by O’Malley on the back. “We
production. Witness the academic reaction
were goofy gals in our midtwenties,” Amini
to the work: a pamphlet O’Malley created
says. “The silliness of our outfits allowed
promoting the Pep Talk Squad was her grad
people to approach us.”
school thesis. Critiques ran to asking how her work was art rather than, say, self-help,
And people did. When asked, “Is there any-
psychology, or therapy.
thing you need pep or encouragement on?” most people offered up real and difficult
*****
personal issues. Each session was a genuine conversation, lasting something like fifteen minutes. As journalist Bonnie Tsui has
Maybe it was all of those. Art can be, of
pointed out, O’Malley embodied that rarest
course. Matisse knew that when he said he
of the human species, “an extrovert but a
wanted art that was “a soothing, calming
good listener.” In other words, perfect for
influence on the mind, something like a good
her task.
armchair.”
One of the Pep Talk Squad would ask ques-
I first saw O’Malley’s work sometime
tions while the other typed up responses
in 2013, bright and popping posters in
on a portable typewriter, on carbon paper
places normally reserved for advertising
168
(newsstands, BART stations) consisting of
O’Malley’s art does begin it. “[Her] work
phrases like: This Is It, This Place Right
will always remain relevant and powerful,
Now, and More Beautiful Than You Ever
because it taps into the human condition—
Imagined. I spotted my first one on Market
what we tell ourselves every day that spurs
Street—This Is It—and assumed it was
us to continue to go on in our lives,” Beltran
something about a new app or software or
writes. “And not just go on, but revel in the
some such. But the lack of further advertis-
present, and to pursue what inspires us.”
ing made me look closer. In the lower left
Included in a group show with O’Malley at
corner it read, The Thing Quarterly, a local
Intersection for the Arts, Beltran fell in
artist-run publication. I was totally charmed
love with and bought on sight one of her
to find art in the very mouth of Mammon,
pieces, a black rectangle with white letter-
where Twitter and Facebook and grillions
ing proclaiming: You Are Here. Beltran calls
of start-ups were busy setting up camps,
it “a map of your own personal geography.”
raiding the city and the world.
Looking at it, she says, “I’m actually aware
Called Mantras for the Urban Dweller
of ‘being here now.’” Not bad for three little
(Moment to Moment), the series, as
words in black and white.
explained by O’Malley, was “open-ended public service announcements; invitations to
*****
pause amid the hustle of the city.” I didn’t see much pausing near her Mantras, at
Though often quite simple, O’Malley’s
least where I was. But I did see homeless
textual pieces pack a big punch. The next
people, tech hipsters, art students, tourists,
time I spotted her work was a couple of
flâneurs, UPS drivers, and more, the messy
years after the first, in the East Bay. I
horde of our too-cool city, rushing by them.
didn’t know it was hers right away, though
Including me.
I should have. It had her every hallmark: bright yellow with black lettering like a
O’Malley understood this reality, but hoped
textual smiley face, declaring: Less Inter-
to nudge us elsewhere. “In these works I’m
net, More Love. It plastered the side of a
suggesting my wish for how things could
building in Berkeley, so large and insistent
be: if we paid closer attention to our being,
that I read it easily as I drove by. It made
to our grieving, to the way the sun makes
me smile.
a spectacular reflection on the buildings I’d been visiting my friend Chaylee in Oak-
at that certain time of day. It has to begin somewhere, why not here?”
land and was headed into Berkeley on an
JD Beltran, artist and president of the
Bay during my previous fifteen years in San
San Francisco Arts Commission, believes
Francisco, for the past eighteen months I’d
errand. Though I’d rarely gone to the East
169
Susan O’Malley. Less Internet More Love. 2015.
visited Chaylee and her children every few
scheduled delivery of her twin daughters in
weeks or so. She’d been there for me when
three days. She wrote e-mails and posted
my own kids were little, and I wanted to do
a note on Facebook asking if anyone could
the same. Seeing the mural confirmed my
help transport an artwork. An artist friend
best intentions—that human contact, how-
came by to borrow a book, young daughter
ever erratic, beats out e-mail any day.
in tow. It’s easy to imagine O’Malley thinking how amazing it was that soon she would
It wasn’t until I was home and Googled
have daughters herself.
Less Internet, More Love that I discovered the terrible coincidence of seeing O’Malley’s
Her husband was working in an adjoining
work again (it was her of course; I should
room that day when, not long after the
have known).
friend and his daughter left, he heard a
The week before her bright yellow mural
O’Malley on the floor, unconscious. He
went up, O’Malley was at home in Berke-
started CPR. EMTs were there within
ley getting things shipshape before the
minutes, but O’Malley could not be revived.
noise. Going in to investigate, he found
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Her daughters, delivered at the hospital via
Using her genius for connection, O’Malley
C-section, lived just long enough for their
had asked more than a hundred people of all
father to hold them.
ages and walks of life to imagine time traveling to the future and meeting themselves
Susan O’Malley was thirty-eight years old
at age eighty. What words of wisdom might
when she experienced a fatal heart arrhyth-
this future self give? The book—big sheets
mia caused by an undiagnosed tumor
filled with her trademark bold text and
attached to its outer membrane.
brilliant colors—illustrates those answers. From the idiosyncratic, It Was a Good Call
This, to an artist whose work was all about
to Buy the RV and It’s OK to Have Sugar in
the heart.
Your Tea, to the broadly instructive, Don’t Be Afraid and Don’t Ever Lie, to the some-
It is unspeakable. Outrageous. Unthinkable.
what plagiaristic, Your Heart Has Reasons
I know. I’ve withheld this tsunami of unut-
Your Head Does Not Know (see Pascal),
terably terrible truth until nearly the end.
they all share an abiding belief in the
But I did so in hopes of holding O’Malley’s
wisdom we have within. If we listen to our
big-hearted art—if just for some minutes—
hearts. (Actually, that’s one too: Do Things
apart from the heartbreaking fact of her
That Matter to Your Heart.)
death. Her art should be, and deserves to
My favorite of these is the only one not
be, experienced on its own wacky, brave,
brightly colored. In stark black and white it
and beautiful terms.
proclaims: Art Before Dishes.
At Montalvo, they’ve reinstalled A Healing
I believe it. I try to act accordingly.
Walk and are working to make it a perma-
Thank God for us that O’Malley did, too.
nent exhibition. Not because O’Malley died, but because of what she made. “She is a significant Bay Area artist,” explains Conwell. “We love Susan and we love having her work here, but this is not a memorial. She is going to help bring attention to an important collection with her work.” And so, her collaborations continue. O’Malley’s final project was a book called Advice from My 80-Year-Old Self. It came out a year after she died, her words and images still vibrant and working in the world.
171
Susan O’Malley. Art Before Dishes. 2014.
172
Our story began with my finding sixteen women artists in the third edition of H. W. Janson’s seminal History of Art. I’ve presented fifteen here. Why one short? I’ve left room for myself. For you. For anyone who wants it. Insert yourself here. In her groundbreaking work The Obstacle Race, Germaine Greer wrote, “Books are finite; the story of women painters has no end—indeed it may be said to be just beginning—but a book must stop somewhere.” Insert “artist” for painter and the story is the same. Hell, insert anything you like— poet, architect, filmmaker, actor, brain surgeon, astronaut—and run with it. Great lives and great works are endless: we just have to look for them. And, of course, create them. ***** Let’s get started.
AC K NOWLED G M ENTS No amount of thanks can express what I owe the following people or the gratitude I have for their existence. It is my gobsmacking good fortune to know them. Thanks to Carol Edgarian, generous mentor and friend, whose advice on looking to the heart has transformed my writing and my life. Thanks to Danielle Svetcov for her faith, which has sustained me, and her astonishing willingness to dig in. All thanks to Bridget Watson Payne, for believing in this book and shepherding it into existence with such kindness and intelligence. Great thanks to the wonderful folks at Narrative Magazine, especially Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenks. Gratitude for my writing peeps at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto; I can’t say enough about the support, and fun, I’ve found there. Thanks to my parents, Jake and Polly Quinn, for everything of course, but especially for always esteeming the creative life. Thank you to my sisters, Padeen Quinn and Diane Regan-Sandbak, for illustrating early what awesome women look like. Thanks to my brothers, Brendhan, Patrick, Tom, John, Chris, and Bill, for being such good men. Special thanks to my nephew, Sam Hoiland, whose life assistance meant the difference between doing the work and losing my mind. Thanks to Sharon and Tom Welter for decades of unconditional love, and for happily hanging with the grandkids while I hid upstairs and wrote. Thank you to Sheila Schroeder and Jason Phillips for a place to work (and play) summer after summer at the enchanting Chautauqua Institute. Thanks to Martha Easton and Mark Trowbridge for grad-school awesomeness and beyond, and for their essential help with stories here. Thanks to the many amazing women whose friendship and wisdom have been vital, especially Stacey Hubbard, Annette Hughes-White, Rafferty Atha Jackson, Chaylee Priete, and Tahlia Priete. Special thanks to Jennifer March Soloway, whose many hours of counsel in the pool and on the page have so often saved me. And thanks to Bill and Cindy Feeney, for decades of art and friendship. Finally, ultimate and greatest thanks go to Rick, Lukas, and Zuzu. Without you I’m nothing. With you is everything.
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S EL EC T B I BL IOG RA P HY Als, Hilton. “The Shadow Act: Kara Walker’s Vision.” The New Yorker, October 8, 2007. ———. “The Sugar Sphinx.” The New Yorker, October 8, 2014. Alther, Lisa, and Françoise Gilot. About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter. New York: Doubleday, 2015. Ashton, Dore, and Denise Brown Hare. Rosa Bonheur: A Life and a Legend. New York: Viking Press, 1981. Auricchio, Laura. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2009. Blocker, Jane. Where Is Ana Mendieta? Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1999. Boime, Albert. “The Case of Rosa Bonheur: Why Should a Woman Want to be More Like a Man?” Art History 4, no. 4 (December 1981): 384–409. Broud, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard. The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. New York: Icon Editions, 1992. Buck, Kirsten Pai. Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012. Christensen, Kate. The Great Man. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Faurschou, Luise and Jens, Zhu Qui, and Maya Kovskaya. Louise Bourgeois: Alone and Together. Copenhagen and Beijing: Faurschou Foundation, 2012.
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Garrard, Mary. Artemisia Gentileschi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Greenberg, Jan, and Sandra Jordan. Runaway Girl: The Artist Louise Bourgeois. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003. Greer, Germaine. The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979. Heartney, Eleanor, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal, and Sue Scott. After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art. Munich/London/New York: Prestel Verlag, 2013. Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman’s Life. New York: Ballantine, 1988. Hess, Thomas B., and Elizabeth C. Baker. Art and Sexual Politics. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1973. Hoban, Phoebe. Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010. Hofrichter, Frima Fox. “A Light in the Galaxy.” In Singular Women: Writing the Artist, edited by Kristen Frederickson and Sarah E. Webb. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. Janson, H. W. History of Art. 3rd ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986. Lee, Hermione. Biography: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. Virginia Woolf. New York: Vintage Books, 1999. Levin, Gail. Lee Krasner: A Biography. New York. William Morrow, 2011. Lewison, Jeremy, Barry Walker, Tamar Galb, and Robert Storr. Alice Neel: Painted Truths. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Lurie, Alison. The Truth about Lorin Jones. New York: Avon Books, 1979. Malcolm, Janet. Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.
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Merz, Beatrice, Olga Gambari, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, and Linda M. Montano. Ana Mendieta: She Got Love. Milan: Skira Editore, 2013. Messud, Claire. The Woman Upstairs. New York: Vintage Books, 2013. Mlotek, Haley. “Tracing Ana.” The New Inquiry, March 24, 2014. Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. O’Malley, Susan. Advice from My 80-Year-Old Self. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2016. Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock. Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981. Perry, Gillian. Paula Modersohn-Becker. London: The Women’s Press, 1979. Radycki, Diane. Paula Modersohn-Becker: The First Modern Woman Artist. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2013. Reilly, Maura, ed. The Linda Nochlin Reader. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015. Salenius, Sirpa, ed. Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on NineteenthCentury American Art. Padua, Italy: Il Prato, 2011. Saltz, Jerry. “An Explosion of Color, in Black and White: Kara Walker’s silhouettes don’t just broach America’s touchiest subject—they detonate it.” New York magazine, November 1, 2007. Sandel, Cora. Alberta Alone. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984. ———. Alberta and Freedom. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984. Schjeldahl, Peter. “A Woman’s Work.” The New Yorker, June 29, 2009. Shone, Richard. The Art of Bloomsbury. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. ———. Bloomsbury Portraits. New York: Phaidon Press, 1976.
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Slatkin, Wendy. Women Artists in History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990. Smith, Roberta. “After the Deluge.” The New York Times, March 24, 2006. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1964. Spalding, Frances. Vanessa Bell. New Haven, CT, and New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1983. Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005. Straussman-Pflanzer, Eve. Violence & Virtue: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2013. Tsui, Bonnie. “Trick Your Brain and Smile.” San Francisco Magazine, December 21, 2015. Walker, Kara, and Larry Walker. “Artists in Conversation.” BOMB Magazine, May 8, 2014. Wallach, Amei. “The Lee Krasner Who Was Herself amd Only Herself.” The New York Times. Oct. 3, 1999. Welu, James A., and Pieter Biesboer. Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her World. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1993. Winterson, Jeanette. Art [Objects]. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Woolf, Virginia. A Writer’s Diary. San Diego/New York/London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1982.
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ART C RED ITS ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI:
Judith Severing the Head of Holofernes. Uffizi. Alinari / Art Resource, NY. Susanna and the Elders. Private Collection / Bridgeman Images. Self-Portrait as La Pittura. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2015.
C E S A R E R I PA :
Illustrated title page from Iconologia. © British Library Board / Robana / Art Resource, NY.
JUDITH LEYSTER:
Monogram (detail of Carousing Couple). Musée du Louvre. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Self-Portrait. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC / Bridgeman Images. The Proposition. Mauritshuis. Scala / Art Resource, NY. Early Brabantian Tulip. Frans Hals Museum / de Hallen Haarlem. Photo: Mooie Boeken. Purchased with the support of the Rembrandt Society.
ADÉLAÏDE LABILLE-GUIARD:
Self-portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788). 1785. Oil on canvas, 83 x 59½ inches. Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953 (53.225.5). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. Portrait of Madame Adélaïde. Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Photo: Gérard Blot / Jean Schormans. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Portrait of François-André Vincent. 1795. Musée du Louvre. Photo: Jean-Gilles Berizzi. © RMNGrand Palais / Art Resource, NY.
PIETRO ANTONIO MARTINI:
Paintings Exhibition at the Salon of the Louvre. Hamburger Kunsthalle / Christoph Irrgang / Art Resource, NY.
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MARIE DENISE VILLERS:
Portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes. Oil on canvas, 63½ x 505/8 inches. Mr. and Mrs. Isaac D. Fletcher Collection, Bequest of Isaac D. Fletcher, 1917 (17.120.204). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. A Young Woman Seated by a Window. Private Collection. Courtesy of Sotheby’s. Study of a Woman from Nature (also called Madame Soustra). Musée du Louvre. Photo: Jean-Gilles Berizzi. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.
MARIE VICTOIRE LEMOINE:
The Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter. Oil on canvas, 45 7/8 x 35 inches. Gift of Mrs. Thorneycroft Ryle, 1957 (57.103). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.
ROSA BONHEUR:
Portrait of “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Buffalo Bill Center of the West / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY. The Horse Fair. Oil on canvas, 96¼ x 199½ inches. Gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1887 (87.25). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. Ploughing in the Nivernais. Musée d’Orsay. Photo: Gérard Blot. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.
ÉDOUARD LOUIS DUBUFE:
Portrait of Rosa Bonheur. Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Photo: Gérard Blot. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.
EDMONIA LEWIS:
The Death of Cleopatra. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY. Forever Free (The Morning of Liberty). Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The Wooing of Hiawatha (Old Arrow-Maker and His Daughter). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY.
HENRY ROCHER:
Carte-de-Visite of Edmonia Lewis. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY.
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PA U L A M O D E R S O H N - B E C K E R :
Self-Portrait, Age 30, 6th Wedding Day. Museen Böttcherstraße, Bremen. Portrait of Clara Rilke-Westhoff. Hamburger Kunsthalle / Elke Walford / Art Resource, NY. Reclining Mother and Child II. Museen Böttcherstraße, Bremen. Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace II. Kunstmuseum Basil / Martin P. Bühler.
VA N E S S A B E L L :
Virginia Woolf. © National Portrait Gallery, London. © Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting. Tate, London / Art Resource, NY. © Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Studland Beach. Tate, London / Art Resource, NY. © Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Cover of First Edition of ‘The Waves’ by Virginia Woolf. Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images. © Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy Henrietta Garnett.
ALICE NEEL:
Portrait of Alice Neel based on a photograph © The Estate of Alice Neel / Courtesy David Zwirner, New York / London. Self-Portrait. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY. © The Estate of Alice Neel / Courtesy David Zwirner, New York / London. Frank O’Hara. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY. © The Estate of Alice Neel / Courtesy David Zwirner, New York / London. Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd. Cleveland Museum of Art / Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund / Bridgeman Images. © The Estate of Alice Neel / Courtesy David Zwirner, New York / London. Kate Millett. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY. © The Estate of Alice Neel / Courtesy David Zwirner, New York / London.
LEE KRASNER:
Portrait of Lee Krasner based on a photograph © Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images. Self-Portrait. The Jewish Museum, New York / Art Resource, NY. @ The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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Seated Nude. 1940. Charcoal on paper, 25 x 18 7/8”. Gift of Constance B. Cartwright. The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. @ The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Composition. The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. @ The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Milkweed. Albright-Knox Art Gallery / Art Resource, NY. @ The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
LOUISE BOURGEOIS:
Portrait of Louise Bourgeois based on a photograph © Satoshi Saikusa / Trunk Archive. Femme Maison. © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Fillette. © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. The Institute. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University / Christopher Burke / © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, NY. Maman. Manuel Cohen / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
RUTH ASAWA:
Portrait of Ruth Asawa based on a photograph from Nat Farbman / Getty Images / Ruth Asawa Estate. Courtesy Christies. Untitled. c. 1955. Iron and galvanized steel wire. 123 x 16 x 16 in. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of Jacqueline Hoefer. Andrea fountain. Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco, CA. 1968. Photo and Artwork © Estate of Ruth Asawa. Untitled. c. 1962. Galvanized steel wire. 24 x 24 x 24 in (61 x 61 x 61 cm). The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of the artist.
IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM:
Ruth Asawa at work with children. 1957. Imogen Cunningham Trust.
A N A M E N D I E TA :
Portrait of Ana Mendieta based on a photograph © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC/ Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
182
Silueta Muerta. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC / Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Volcano Series no. 2. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC / Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Volcano Series no. 2. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC / Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Untitled. Davis Museum at Wellesley College / Art Resource, NY. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC / Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
KARA WALKER:
Portrait of Kara Walker based on a photograph © Michele Asselin / Contour / Getty Images / Sillema Jenkins & CO., New York. At the behest of Creative Time Kara E. Walker has confected: A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. Photo: Jason Wyche. Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart. © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Rebel Leader (from Testimony). © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated). © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.
S U S A N O ’ M A L L E Y:
Portrait of Susan O’Malley based on a photograph © Christina Amini / Courtesy of the Susan O’Malley Estate. Installation image of My Healing Garden is Green at Romer Young Gallery, featuring I’m Whole Healing Healed + Holy I’m Home and I Love You Baby. Copyright © Estate of Susan O’Malley. Lawn. Copyright © Estate of Susan O’Malley. Less Internet, More Love. Copyright © Estate of Susan O’Malley. Art Before Dishes. Copyright © Estate of Susan O’Malley.
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I ND EX A
Beltran, JD, 169
Abbott, Berenice, 17
Berenson, Bernard, 56
Abstract Expressionism, 117–20
Beuys, Joseph, 167
Adélaïde, Princess, 46, 47
Black Mountain College, 136–39, 141, 143
Advice from My 80-Year-Old Self (O’Malley), 171
Blocker, Jane, 148 Bloomsbury Group, 100
Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats (Walker), 160
Blue Nude (Matisse), 85, 94
Albers, Josef, 136–37, 141, 142
Bonheur, Raimond, 66, 67
Alvarado Arts Workshop, 143
Bonheur, Rosa, 15, 17, 60–71
Amini, Christina, 166, 168
Botticelli, 25, 87
Andre, Carl, 145–47, 151
Bourdon, David, 111
Andrea Fountain (Asawa), 138
Bourgeois, Louise, 124–33, 164
Anguissola, Sofonisba, 45
Bourke-White, Margaret, 17
Arbuckle, John, 70
Brackett, Edward A., 76
The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait (van Eyck), 88
Brancusi, Constantin, 142
Art Before Dishes (O’Malley), 171, 172
Brody, Sam, 108
Art Institute of Chicago, 143
Brutus (David), 45
The Artist’s Studio (Courbet), 41
Buonarroti, Michelangelo, the Younger, 24
The Art of Painting (Vermeer), 45
C
Asawa, Lois (Masako), 136
Cage, John, 138
Asawa, Nancy (Kimiko), 135
Cameron, Julia Margaret, 99
Asawa, Ruth, 134–43
Canova, Antonio, 77
Asawa, Umakichi, 135
Capet, Marie Gabrielle, 40, 41, 45
Ashton, Dore, 70
Caravaggio, 21, 24, 25, 26, 52
Auricchio, Laura, 45
Caro-Bruce, Tim, 168 Carousing Couple (Leyster), 31–32
B Battcock, Gregory, 111
Cassatt, Mary, 15, 17
Baudelaire, Charles, 85
Castle, Ted, 107
Bauhaus, 137
Cézanne, Paul, 86
Bell, Clive, 98, 100
Chadwick, Whitney, 34
Bell, Vanessa, 96–103, 164
Charpentier, Constance, 55
184
E
Church, Frederic, 139
Early Brabantian Tulip (Leyster), 36, 37
Cleopatra, 73–75, 82–83
Earth Art, 148
Cody, Buffalo Bill, 61–62, 70
Eat Dem Taters (Colescott), 158
Colescott, Robert, 158
Emshwiller, Susan, 123
Composition (Krasner), 121
Enríquez, Carlos, 108
Condon, “Blind John,” 83
Etchells, Frederick and Jessie, 101
Conwell, Donna, 165, 171 Courbet, Gustave, 41, 63
F
Cubism, 85–86
Femme Maison (Bourgeois), 125–26, 129
Cunningham, Imogen, 140, 141
A Few Yards in San Jose (O’Malley), 167
Cunningham, Merce, 138
Fillette (Bourgeois), 128, 129
Curtis, Jackie, 110, 111
Flack, Audrey, 17 Fletcher, Isaac Dudley, 52
D Dante, 22, 165
Foley, Margaret, 77
David, Jacques Louis, 15, 39, 41, 45, 52, 55, 56
Forever Free (Lewis), 77
The Death of Cleopatra (Lewis), 73–75, 82–83
Frankenthaler, Helen, 17
de Kooning, Willem, 118
Frank O’Hara (Neel), 109, 111
Delacroix, Eugène, 63
Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting (Bell), 101
della Francesca, Piero, 102, 109
The Freedwoman on First Hearing of Her Liberty (Lewis), 76–77
De Maria, Walter, 148
From the Center (Lippard), 125, 127
de Rosemond, Carreaux, 40, 41, 45
Fry, Roger, 98, 100, 101
The Destruction of the Father (Bourgeois), 127
Fuller, Buckminster, 138
de Young Museum, 138–39 Dia Art Foundation, 151
G
Diebenkorn, Richard, 139
Gabiou, Marie Elisabeth, 56
Dillard, Annie, 10, 163
Galileo Galilei, 24
Divine Comedy (Dante), 165
Galton, Francis, 67
Doolittle, Kenneth, 108
Garnett, Bunny, 100
Double Negative (Heizer), 148
Garrard, Mary, 19, 21
Drawing Center, 156, 157
Garrison, William Lloyd, 76
Dubufe, Édouard Louis, 69
Gauguin, Paul, 61, 76
Duke of Urbino (della Francesca), 109
Geldzahler, Henry, 111
du Val d’Ognes, Charlotte, 51, 52–59
Gentileschi, Artemisia, 14, 15, 17, 18–29, 52, 87, 156, 164
Du Vernay, Ava, 155
Gentileschi, Orazio, 21–23 Goldwater, Robert, 129, 130
185
The Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter (Lemoine), 56–57
Gone (Walker), 157–58 Gorky, Arshile, 118
Intersection for the Arts, 169
Graham, John, 120 Grant, Duncan, 100
J
Greenberg, Clement, 120
Jackie Curtis and Ritta Redd (Neel), 110, 111
The Green Stripe (Matisse), 106
James, Henry, 78
Greer, Germaine, 25, 32, 39, 44, 173
Jameson, Anna, 25–26
Guggenheim, Peggy, 120
Janson, H. W., 14–15, 173
Guggenheim Museum, 146–47
Johnson, Ray, 138
Gulf Stream (Homer), 161
Jolly Topper (Leyster), 34
H
Judith Severing the Head of Holofernes (Gentileschi), 19–21, 24–26, 29
Hals, Frans, 31–32, 34–35, 36
Just Kids (Smith), 93
Harden, Marcia Gay, 123
K
Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) (Walker), 160, 161
Kahlo, Frida, 15, 86 Käsebier, Gertrude, 17
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 78
Kate Millett (Neel), 112–13
A Healing Walk (O’Malley), 165, 171
Katz, Robert, 150
Heizer, Michael, 148
Keep, John, 75
Hepworth, Barbara, 17
Kim, Byron, 156–57
Hess, Thomas B., 51, 52
King, Martin Luther, 161
Higonnet, Ann, 58
Klumpke, Anna, 70–71
History of Art (Janson), 14–15, 173
Krasner, Lee, 14–15, 17, 114–23, 140
Hofmann, Hans, 118–19, 120, 140
Kroll, Leon, 118
Hofrichter, Frima Fox, 37 Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis, 32
L
Hogarth Press, 102
Labille-Guiard, Adélaïde, 15–16, 38–49, 54, 109, 111, 127, 164
Homer, Winslow, 161
Lange, Dorothea, 17
The Horse Fair (Bonheur), 62–66, 70, 71
Langston, John Mercer, 76
Hosmer, Harriet, 77, 80
Lanier, Albert, 141
How to Be an Artist in Residence (O’Malley), 167
La Primavera (Botticelli), 87–88
I
Laver, James, 34, 56
Iconologia (Ripa), 28–29
Lawn (O’Malley), 166–67
I Love You Baby (O’Malley), 164
Lawrence, Jacob, 138
The Institute (Bourgeois), 131–32, 133
Léger, Fernand, 129
Institute of Fine Arts, 15, 39, 56, 130–32
Lemoine, Marie Victoire, 56–57
186
Leonard, Joanne, 17
Micas, Nathalie, 67, 70, 71
Leonardo da Vinci, 31
Michelangelo, 21, 22, 24
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso), 85–86
Milkweed (Krasner), 122–23
Less Internet, More Love (O’Malley), 169–70
Millett, Kate, 112–13
Levin, Gail, 116, 117
Mlotek, Haley, 151
Lewis, Edmonia, 15, 72–83, 164
Modernism, 85–86
Lewison, Jeremy, 111
Modersohn, Otto, 87, 90–92, 94
Leyster, Judith, 30–37
Modersohn-Becker, Paula, 15, 84–95, 106, 164, 166
The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (Saar), 159
Moir, Alfred, 51–52
The Lightning Field (De Maria), 148
Molenaer, Jan Miense, 36–37
Ligon, Glenn, 157
Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), 31
Lippard, Lucy, 125, 127, 130
Mondrian, Piet, 120
Little Image series (Krasner), 121, 123
Montalvo Arts Center, 165, 171
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 80
Morisot, Berthe, 17
Louvre, 31–32, 42, 46, 47, 49, 55, 57, 58, 67, 87
Munch, Edvard, 39, 55, 61, 85 Musée d’Orsay, 68
M Machiavelli, Niccolo, 24
N
Mackensen, Fritz, 90
Neel, Alice, 86, 104–13
Madonna della Misericordia (della Francesca), 102
Negron, Jose, 108
Magritte, René, 32
Nochlin, Linda, 58, 107, 131, 158
Maman (Bourgeois), 132, 133
Noguchi, Isamu, 141
Mantras for the Urban Dweller (O’Malley), 169
Nude Bather (Courbet), 63
Mapplethorpe, Robert, 113, 129
O
The Marble Faun (Hawthorne), 78
The Obstacle Race (Greer), 32, 173
Marie-Antoinette, Queen, 44, 46
O’Hara, Frank, 109, 111
Marie-Antoinette Surrounded by Her Children (Vigée-Lebrun), 46
O’Keeffe, Georgia, 15, 17
Martini, Pietro Antonio, 47
O’Malley, Lupita, 163–65
Masaccio, 54
O’Malley, Susan, 162–72
Matisse, Amélie, 106
Opie, Catherine, 86
Matisse, Henri, 85, 86, 94, 106
Oppenheimer, Margaret, 56, 57
Melancholy (Charpentier), 55
Orland, Frank, 73, 83
Mendieta, Ana, 86, 144–51
Orozco, José, 136
Mendieta, Raquel Cecilia, 151
P
Mendieta, Raquelin, 147–48
The Painted Word (Wolfe), 119
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 39, 42, 45–46, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 62, 66, 73, 111, 160
Pantuhoff, Igor, 118
187
Parker, Dorothy, 107
Rich, B. Ruby, 145
Pep Talk Squad (O’Malley), 168
Richardson, Marilyn, 73, 75, 83
Peridot Gallery, 143
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 87, 88, 90, 94
Perreault, John, 145
Rilke-Westhoff, Clara, 89, 90, 91
Personages (Bourgeois), 129–30
Ripa, Cesar, 28–29
Pfaff, Judy, 17
Robespierre, Maximilien, 48
Picasso, Pablo, 85, 86, 101, 117, 118, 120
Rocher, Henry, 81
Ploughing in the Nivernais (Bonheur), 68–69
Romer Young Gallery, 163
Pollock (film), 123
A Room of One’s Own (Woolf), 34, 99
Pollock, Jackson, 14, 117, 118, 120–22
Rosenberg, Harold, 117
Porset, Clara, 136
Rosenberg, Leah, 165
Portrait of “Buffalo Bill” Cody (Bonheur), 62
Rosenblum, Robert, 15, 39, 41, 49, 158
Portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes (Villers), 51, 52–59
Rothschild, John, 108 Ruskin, John, 25, 26, 68
Portrait of Clara Rilke-Westhoff (Modersohn- Becker), 89, 90, 91
S
Portrait of François-André Vincent (LabilleGuiard), 48, 49
Saar, Betye, 158–59
Portrait of Madame Adélaïde (Labille-Guiard), 46–47
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 141
Saltz, Jerry, 156
San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, 165
Portrait of Rosa Bonheur (Dubufe), 69
Saslow, James M., 63
Pound, Ezra, 118
Schiff, Gert, 15, 88, 93–94
The Prince (Machiavelli), 24
Schjeldahl, Peter, 31, 32
The Proposition (Leyster), 35–36
The Scream (Munch), 39
Puberty (Munch), 55
Seated Nude (Krasner), 118, 120
R
Self-Portrait (Anguissola), 45
Radycki, Diane, 86
Self-Portrait (Krasner), 116
Rainy Season in the Tropics (Church), 139
Self-Portrait (Leyster), 32–33, 34, 35
Rasmussen, Elise, 151
Self-Portrait (Neel), 106–7
Rauschenberg, Robert, 138
Self-Portrait, Age 30, 6th Wedding Day (Modersohn-Becker), 86–88, 94
Rebel Leader (Walker), 159
Self-Portrait as La Pittura (Gentileschi), 27–29
Reception of a Chevalier de Saint-Lazare (LabilleGuiard), 47–49
Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace (Modersohn- Becker), 93–94
Reclining Mother and Child II (Modersohn- Becker), 91, 92, 94 Redd, Ritta, 110, 111
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils (Labille-Guiard), 39, 40, 41–42, 44–46, 54
Rembrandt, 36, 106, 107
Serenade (Leyster), 34
Rich, Adrienne, 85
Shaw, Robert Gould, 76
188
V
Sherman, Cindy, 86
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 66
Shone, Richard, 102
van Eyck, Jan, 88
Siluetas (Mendieta), 145, 146, 147, 148, 151
van Gogh, Vincent, 61, 119
Smith, Kiki, 86
Varnedoe, Kirk, 39
Smith, Patti, 93, 113
Vermeer, Johannes, 45
Smith, Roberta, 147
Victoria, Queen, 66
Smithson, Robert, 148
Vigée-Lebrun, Élisabeth, 17, 44, 46, 48, 57
Smithsonian, 139
Villers, Marie Denise, 50–59
Soby, James Thrall, 55
Vincent, François-André, 43, 48, 49
Spalding, Frances, 98
Vincent, François-Elie, 43
Spero, Nancy, 86
Virginia Woolf (Bell), 98
Spiral Jetty (Smithson), 148
Viso, Olga, 151
Stebbins, Emma, 77
Volcano Series (Mendieta), 148–50
Stephen, Leslie, 99–100
von Bode, Wilhelm, 32
Sterling, Charles, 51, 55, 56, 57
The Voyage Out (Woolf), 98, 103
Stevens, May, 112
W
Stiattesi, Pierantonio, 23
Walker, Kara, 152–61
Story, William Wetmore, 78
Walker, Larry, 156
Studland Beach (Bell), 101–3
Wallach, Amei, 122
Study of a Woman in Nature (Villers), 57, 58
Warhol, Andy, 39, 106, 111
A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby (Walker), 153–55
The Waves (Woolf), 98, 103 Whistler, James McNeill, 61
Susanna and the Elders (Gentileschi), 25, 26–27, 87
Whitney Museum of American Art, 143
T
Wolfe, Tom, 119
Tassi, Agostino, 22–23, 25
Women, Art, and Society (Chadwick), 34
Testimony (Walker), 159
The Wooing of Hiawatha (Lewis), 79, 80–81, 82
Thiebaud, Wayne, 139
Woolf, Leonard, 98
Thoré-Bürger, Théophile, 61
Woolf, Virginia, 34, 97–99, 100, 101, 102, 103
Tinterow, Gary, 160
A Writer’s Diary (Woolf), 99
Tomkins, Calvin, 146 To the Lighthouse (Woolf), 98, 102–3
Y
Tribute Money (Masaccio), 54
Yap, Christine Wong, 165
Trowbridge, Mark, 32, 35
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 165
Tsui, Bonnie, 168
You Are Here (O’Malley), 169
Twombly, Cy, 139
A Young Woman Seated by a Window (Villers), 57
189
Photo: Amy Perl B R I D G E T Q U I N N is a writer and art history scholar who’s worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taught at Portland State University and other institutions. She is an active member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and serves on the advisory board of Narrative Magazine. Her work has been a finalist for the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction and has twice been nominiated for the Pushcart Prize. Her personal essay “At Swim, Two Girls” was included in The Best American Sports Writing 2013. She lives with her husband and two children in San Francisco. L I S A C O N G D O N ’s art practice includes hand lettering, painting, drawing, and pattern design. She has authored several books, including Whatever You Are be a Good One; Art, Inc.; Fortune Favors the Brave; and The Joy of Swimming, also from Chronicle Books. She lives with her wife, two cats, and Chihuahua in Portland, Oregon.
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